22500698028

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

BY

ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD

The Concept of Nature

An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of
Natural Knowledge

The Principle of Relativity with Applica¬
tions to Physical Science
Process and Reality. An Essay in Cosmology
Religion in the Making
Science and the Modern World
Symbolism: Its Meaning and Effect
Adventures of Ideas

In Collaboration with Bertrand Russell

Principia Mathematica

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

By

ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD

Sc.D., LL.D., F.R.S., F.B.A.

FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE IN THE UNIVERSITY
OF CAMBRIDGE AND PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY
IN HARVARD UNIVERSITY

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AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS

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Copyrighted in the United
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All rights reserved

First edition , March 1 933
Reprinted, May 1933
Reprinted 1935

>, 1939

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN

To

JULIA ISHAM TAYLOR
and

HENRY OSBORN TAYLOR

TO WHOSE FRIENDSHIP
I OWE SO MANY
HAPPY HOURS

Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2018 with funding from
Wellcome Library

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PREFACE

The title of this book, Adventures of Ideas , bears two meanings,
both applicable to the subject-matter. One meaning is the
effect of certain ideas in promoting the slow drift of mankind
towards civilization. This is the Adventure of Ideas in the
history of mankind. The other meaning is the author’s ad¬
venture in framing a speculative scheme of ideas which shall
be explanatory of the historical adventure.

The book is in fact a study of the concept of civilization,
and an endeavour to understand how it is that civilized
beings arise. One point, emphasized throughout, is the im¬
portance of Adventure for the promotion and preservation
of civilization.

The three books — Science and the Modern World , Process and
Reality , Adventures of Ideas — are an endeavour to express a
way of understanding the nature of things, and to point out
how that way of understanding is illustrated by a survey
of the mutations of human experience. Each book can be
read separately; but they supplement each other’s omissions
or compressions.

The books that have chiefly influenced my general way of
looking at this historical topic are Gibbon’s Decline and Fall ,
Cardinal Newman’s Essay on the Development of Christian
Doctrine , Paul Sarpi’s History of the Council of Trent , Henry
Osborn Taylor’s The Mediaeval Mind, Leslie Stephen’s English
Thought in the Eighteenth Century , and various well-known
collections of letters. While on the subject of literature,
I venture to commend to the notice of those interested in
an earlier development of English Thought, and also in good

Vlll

PREFACE

literature, the sermons of the Elizabethan and Jacobean
divines. Also H. O. Taylor’s Thought and Expression in the
Sixteenth Century presents the currents and cross-currents of
thought in those times. The twentieth century, so far as it
has yet advanced, bears some analogy to that predecessor in
European history, both in clash of thought and in clash of
political interest.

In Part n, dealing with Cosmology, I have made constant
use of two books published by the Oxford University Press
in 1928, namely, A Commentary on Plato's Timaeus , by Professor
A. E. Taylor of the University of Edinburgh, and The Greek
Atomists and Epicurus , by Dr Cyril Bailey, Tutor of Balliol
College, Oxford.

Use has already been made of some parts of the book in
response to invitations which I had the honour to receive.
The main substance of Chapters 1, 11, in, vn, vm was delivered
as the four Mary Flexner Lectures at Bryn Mawr College,
during the session 1929-30: they have not been hitherto
published. Also Chapter ix, c Science and Philosophy’ — not
previously published — was delivered as the Davies Lecture
in Philosophy, at the Institute of Arts and Sciences, Columbia
University, March, 1932. Chapter vi, ‘Foresight’, was de¬
livered as a lecture at the Harvard Business School, and by
the request of Dean W. B. Donham was published as a
preface to his book, Business Adrift , McGraw-Hill Book
Company, Inc., New York, 1931. Also Chapter xi, ‘Objects
and Subjects’, was delivered as the presidential address to the
eastern division of the American Philosophical Association,
at New Haven, December, 1931; and has since been published
in The Philosophical Review , Vol. xli, 1932, Longmans, Green,
and Company, New York.

Some unpublished lectures, delivered at Dartmouth College,
New Hampshire, in 1926, embodied a preliminary sketch of
the topic of this book. They were concerned with the two

PREFACE

IX

levels of ideas which are required for successful civilization,
namely, particularized ideas of low generality, and philosophic
ideas of high generality. The former set are required to reap
the fruit of the type of civilization immediately attained; the
latter set are required to guide the adventure toward novelty,
and to secure the immediate realization of the worth of such
ideal aim.

I am indebted to my wife for many ideas fundamental to
the discussion; and also for the great labour of revision of
the successive drafts of the various chapters.

ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD

HARVARD UNIVERSITY

September 1932

CONTENTS

Preface page vij

PART I

SOCIOLOGICAL

Chap. I. Introduction 3

II. The Human Soul 11

III. The Humanitarian Ideal 32

IV. Aspects of Freedom 54

V. From Force to Persuasion 87

VI. Foresight no

Epilogue 127

PART II

COSMOLOGICAL

VII. Laws of Nature 131

VIII. Cosmologies 152

IX. Science and Philosophy 179

X. The New Reformation 205

PART III
PHILOSOPHICAL

XI. Objects and Subjects 225

XII. Past, Present, Future 246

XIII. The Grouping of Occasions 258

XIV. Appearance and Reality 268

XV. Philosophic Method 283

xn

CONTENTS

PART IV
CIVILIZATION

Chap . XVI. Truth

page 309

XVII. Beauty

324

XVIII. Truth and Beauty

34i

XIX. Adventure

352

XX. Peace

366

Index of Proper Names

383

Index of Terms

387

PART I

SOCIOLOGICAL

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

Section I. In its widest possible extension the title of this
book — Adventures of Ideas — might be taken as a synonym
for The History of The Human Race, in respect to its wide
variety of mental experiences. In this sense of the title, the
Human Race must experience its own history. It cannot be
written in its total variety.

Throughout this book I propose to consider critically the
sort of history which ideas can have in the life of humanity,
and to illustrate my thesis by an appeal to some well-known
examples. The particular topics chosen for illustration will
be dictated by the arbitrary limitations of my own know¬
ledge, and by the consideration of their general interest and
importance in our modern life. Also for our purpose in the
book the notion of History includes the present and the
future together with the past, affording a mutual elucidation
and wrapped in common interest. For the facts in detail we
shall be dependent upon that great band of critical scholars
whose labours to-day, and for the past three centuries, lay
upon mankind the obligation to deepest reverence.

Theories are built upon facts; and conversely the reports
upon facts are shot through and through with theoretical
interpretation. Direct visual observation is concerned with
the vision of coloured shapes in motion — 4 questionable
shapes5. Direct aural observation is concerned with auditions
of sounds. But some contemporary observer of such shapes

1-2

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

4

and noises, for example, some envoy resident at a foreign
Court, interpreting the so-called ‘bare5 facts, states that ‘he
interviewed the minister of state, who manifested con¬
siderable emotion and explained with great clearness the
measures with which he would meet the impending crisis'.
In such ways contemporary evidence is contemporary inter¬
pretation, including the assumption of data other than these
bare sensa.

In some subsequent age the critical scholar in accordance
with his own theoretical judgments selects from bygone
contemporary observations: he criticizes the contemporary
observers, and gives his own interpretations of the contem¬
porary evidence. We thus arrive at ‘pure history5, according
to the faith of the school of history prevalent in the latter
part of the nineteenth century. This notion of historians, of
history devoid of aesthetic prejudice, of history devoid of
any reliance on metaphysical principles and cosmological
generalizations, is a figment of the imagination. The belief
in it can only occur to minds steeped in provinciality — the
provinciality of an epoch, of a race, of a school of learning,
of a trend of interest — minds unable to divine their own un¬
spoken limitations.

The historian in his description of the past depends on
his own judgment as to what constitutes the importance of
human life. Even when he has rigorously confined himself
to one selected aspect, political or cultural, he still depends
on some decision as to what constitutes the culmination of
that phase of human experience and as to what constitutes
its degradation. For example, considering the political his¬
tory of mankind, Hegel saw in the Prussian State of his date
its culmination: a generation later Macaulay saw that cul¬
mination in the English constitutional system of his date.
The whole judgment on thoughts and actions depends upon

INTRODUCTION

5

such implicit presuppositions. You cannot consider wisdom
or folly, progress or decadence, except in relation to some
standard of judgment, some end in view. Such standards,
such ends, when widely diffused, constitute the driving force
of ideas in the history of mankind. They also guide the com¬
position of historical narradve.

In considering the history of ideas, I maintain that the
notion of ‘ mere knowledge 5 is a high abstraction which we
should dismiss from our minds. Knowledge is always ac¬
companied with accessories of emotion and purpose. Also
we must remember that there are grades in the generality
of ideas. Thus a general idea occurs in history in special
forms determined by peculiar circumstances of race and of
stage of civilization. The higher generalities rarely receive
any accurate verbal expression. They are hinted at through
their special forms appropriate to the age in question. Also
the emotional accompaniments are partly due to the vague
feeling of importance derived from the superior generality,
and partly due to the special interest of special forms in
which generalities make their appearance. Some people are
stirred by a flag, a national anthem; others by the vague
feeling of the form of civilization which their country stands
for. In most people the two origins of emotion are fused
together.

Gibbon’s history demonstrates a twofold tale. It tells of
the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire through a
thousand years. We see the greatness of that Empire at its
height, its military organization, its provincial administra¬
tion, its welter of races, the rise and clash of two religions,
the passage of Greek philosophy into Christian theology.
Gibbon displays before us the greatness and the littleness of
soldiers and of statesmen, of philosophers and of priests, the
pathos, the heroism, the grossness of the general multitude

6

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

of humanity. He shows us the happiness of mankind and
the horrors which it has endured.

But throughout this history, it is Gibbon who speaks. He
was the incarnation of the dominant spirit of his own times.
In this way his volumes also tell another tale. They are a
record of the mentality of the eighteenth century. They are
at once a detailed history of the Roman Empire, and a
demonstration of the general ideas of the silver age of the
modern European Renaissance. This silver age, like its Roman
counterpart seventeen hundred years earlier, was oblivious of
its own imminent destruction by the impact of the Age of
Steam and of Democracy, the counterparts of the Barbarians
and of the Christians. Thus Gibbon narrates the Decline and
F all of the Roman Empire and exemplifies the prelude to the
Decline and Fall of his own type of culture.

Section II. The history of ideas is dominated by a dicho¬
tomy which is illustrated by this comparison of Steam and
Democracy in recent times to Barbarians and Christians in
the classical civilization. Steam and Barbarians, each in their
own age, were the senseless agencies driving their respective
civilizations away from inherited modes of order. These
senseless agencies are what Greek writers sometimes [e.g. in
the Timaeus of Plato, and passim throughout general litera¬
ture] call ‘compulsion’ [a vay/07], and sometimes ‘violence’
[/3ia] . They are apt to speak of ‘compulsion’ when these
agencies appear with a general co-ordination among them¬
selves, and of ‘violence’ when they appear as a welter of
sporadic outbursts. It is one task of history to display the
types of compulsion and of violence characteristic of each
age. On the other hand, Democracy in modern times, and
Christianity in the Roman Empire, exemplify articulated
beliefs issuing from aspirations, and issuing into aspirations.
Their force was that of consciously formulated ideals at

INTRODUCTION

7

odds with the ancestral pieties which had preserved and
modulated existing social institutions. For example, we find
the Christian theologian, Clement of Alexandria, exhorting
his contemporaries to shun custom [avvrjdeia]. These
Christian ideals were among the persuasive agencies re¬
fashioning their respective ages.

The well-marked transition from one age into another can
always be traced to some analogues to Steam and Democracy,
or — if you prefer it — to some analogues to Barbarians and
Christians. Senseless agencies and formulated aspirations co¬
operate in the work of driving mankind from its old anchorage.
Sometimes the period of change is an age of hope, sometimes
it is an age of despair. When mankind has slipped its cables,
sometimes it is bent on the discovery of a New World, and
sometimes it is haunted by the dim sound of the breakers
dashing on the rocks ahead. The Fall of the Roman Empire
occurred in a prolonged age of despair : Steam and Democracy
belong to an age of hope.

It is easy to exaggerate the contrast between these two
kinds of ages of transition. It all depends upon the sur¬
viving records. Whose feelings do they express? After all,
even during the worst period of the decline of Rome the
barbarians were enjoying themselves. To Attila and his
hordes their incursion into Europe was an enjoyable episode
diversifying the monotonous round of a pastoral life. But we
have preserved for us hymns and ejaculations of sentinels
in North Italian towns as they paced the walls amid the
gathering gloom of a winter’s night: ‘From the fury of
the Huns, Good Lord deliver us5. In this instance it seems
easy to discriminate; barbarism and civilization were at
odds with each other, and we stand for civilization. I waive
the point that we now know something about the social
state of central Asia at that epoch, and that the imagination

8

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

of a sentinel on the walls of Padua or Aquileia was not quite
adequate in its presentation of the Huns.

In every age of well-marked transition there is the pattern
of habitual dumb practice and emotion which is passing,
and there is the oncoming of a new complex of habit. Between
the two lies a zone of anarchy, either a passing danger or a
prolonged welter involving misery of decay and zest of young
life. In our estimate of these agencies everything depends
upon our standpoint of criticism. In other words, our history
of ideas is derivative from our ideas of history, that is to say,
upon our own intellectual standpoint.

Mankind is not wholly dumb, and in this respect it differs
from other races of animals. Yet in the history of the world
of animals even among the ancestors of men, there have
been transitions of patterns of habit which exemplify a
history of forms of behaviour devoid of any contemporary
intellectual expression, either in the form of antecedently
expressed purpose or in the form of subsequently expressed
reflection. For example, at a remote period urged by the
growth of forests some mammals ascended trees and became
apes; and then later, after the lapse of some vast period,
urged by the decay of forests, the same race descended from
trees and became men.

We have here history on its senseless side, with its tran¬
sitions pushed forward either by rainfall and trees, or by
brute barbarians, or by coal, steam, electricity and oil. Yet
even the senseless side of history refuses to accept its own
proper category of sheer senselessness. The rainfall and the
trees are items in a majestic order of nature: Attila’s Huns
had their own intellectual point of view in some respects
surprisingly preferable to that of the degenerate Romans:
the age of coal and steam was pierced through and through
by the intellectual abilities of particular men who urged

INTRODUCTION

9

forward the transition. But finally, with all this qualifica¬
tion, rainfall and Huns and steam-engines represent brute
necessity, as conceived in Greek thought, urging forward
mankind apart from any human conception of an end in¬
tellectually expressed. Fragmentary intellectual agencies
co-operated blindly to turn apes into men, to turn the
classic civilization into mediaeval Europe, to overwhelm the
Renaissance by the Industrial Revolution. Men knew not
what they did.

Section III. The fragment of human history, upon which
this book is concentrated, is concerned with the transmission
of civilization from the Near East to Western Europe. The
topic is limited to the story of the energizing of two or three
main ideas, whose effective entertainment constitutes civiliza¬
tion. These ideas are traced in outline from their status in
the ancient world of the Near East up to the present time.
The boundaries of a civilization are indefinite, whether we
are speaking of geography or of time, or of essential cha¬
racter. This vagueness more especially characterizes the
eastern boundaries of Western Europe and the boundaries
of the Near East. Also these boundaries fluctuate as the
centuries pass. In its latest phase of brilliance the Near East
touched the Atlantic Ocean. But during its earlier period
of greatness, before the age of the Greeks, it stretched from
the Nile Valley to Mesopotamia, and from the Indian Ocean
to the Euxine and the Caspian Seas. It also penetrated into
the Aegean Basin, and later into the Western Mediterranean.
But the Near East is only important for this discussion in
its function of the origin and the background of modern
Europe.

The whole point of the present enquiry is to demonstrate
those factors in Western civilization which jointly constitute
a new element in the history of culture. Of course no novelty

10

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

is wholly novel. Factors which were present sporadically
and as the dreams of individuals, or as a faint tinge upon
other modes of mentality, received a new importance in the
later civilization of Europe. The question is to understand
how the shift of emphasis happened, and to recognize the
effects of this shift upon the sociology of the Western World.
In this way we obtain some presuppositions of thought which
the detailed criticism of modern sociological development
requires. We can then discern the status of the impulses which
are driving forward the World of mankind.

In the story of this transmission of civilization from East to
West, the Hebrew, the Hellenic, and the Hellenistic epochs
can, with equal reason, be considered together, either as out¬
posts of the Near East in the process of differentiating itself
into the first phase of European mentality, or as the earliest
groups of Europeans to receive the torch and successfully
to assert their spiritual independence. Between them, the
Hebrews and the Greeks introduced into Europe, and into
the latest phase of the Near East, notions concerning the
status of mankind in general, and of individual men in par¬
ticular, and a discipline and direction in the general exercise
of mentality, which in their combination have started the
modern phase of progress within the European races. The
first part of this book is occupied with the most general aspect
of the sociological functions arising from, and issuing into,
ideas concerning the human race; and the second part is
concerned with modern cosmological principles which also
are the outcome of ancient Greek and Hebrew thought.
A simple-minded interest in ideas with one or other of these
two types of generality is the main source from which mankind
acquires novelty of outlook.

CHAPTER n

THE HUMAN SOUL

Section I. In any human society, one fundamental idea
tingeing every detail of activity is the general conception of
the status of the individual members of that group, considered
apart from any special pre-eminence. In such societies as
they emerge into civilization, the members recognize each
other as individuals exercising the enjoyment of emotions,
passions, comforts and discomforts, perceptions, hopes, fears,
and purposes. Also there are powers of intellectual under¬
standing involving discrimination of details of characters,
judgments of ‘true or false5, and of ‘beautiful or ugly5, and
of ‘good or bad5. We pass our lives vaguely and flittingly
entertaining groups of such experiences, and we attribute like
ways of existence to others.

But in the early stages of civilization such experiences and
beliefs are mere matters of course. They provoke no abrupt
reflective reaction isolating them for thoughtful inspection.
Accordingly there is no modification of habit arising from the
valuation of human beings as such. Thus the various members
of a society find themselves cherishing each other, destroying,
obeying or commanding, as the case may be. There is a com¬
munal organization, and there are beliefs about it slowly
forming themselves into explanations.

We are to discuss the later phases when civilization has
reached its modern height, a period of three thousand years
at the most. Thinkers have now arisen. The notion of duty

12

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

has dawned and received some definition. Above all the
notion of a psyche — that is, of a mind — has dawned. In its
first phase of gradual emergence, this great notion was in¬
stinctively used as a master-key to make intelligible the
baffling occurrences of nature. The two most obvious charac¬
teristics of Nature, writes Lytton Strachey,1 are loveliness
and power. The beauty dawned later upon human intelli¬
gences than did its power. Also in early phases of thought
the powers of nature became the minds of Nature — minds
bestial, ruthless, and yet placable. In all stages of civilization
the popular gods represent the more primitive brutalities of
the tribal life. The progress of religion is defined by the de¬
nunciation of gods. The keynote of idolatry is contentment
with the prevalent gods.

The factor in human life provocative of a noble dis¬
content is the gradual emergence into prominence of a sense
of criticism, founded upon appreciations of beauty, and of
intellectual distinction, and of duty. The moral element is
derivative from the other factors in experience. For other¬
wise there is no content for duty to operate upon. There
can be no mere morality in a vacuum. Thus the primary
factors in experience are first the animal passions such as
love, sympathy, ferocity, together with analogous appeti-
tions and satisfactions; and secondly, the more distinctly
human experiences of beauty, and of intellectual fineness,
consciously enjoyed. Here the notion of intellectual distinc¬
tion, or of fineness, is somewhat broader than that of Truth5,
which is ordinarily cited in this connection. There is a
grandeur of achievement in the delicate adjustment of
thought to thought, which is independent of the mere blunt
question of truth. We may term it c beauty5. But intellectual
beauty, however capable of being hymned in terms relevant

1 Cf. Books and Characters, Chapter on ‘The Poetry of Blake’.

THE HUMAN SOUL

13

to sensible beauty, is yet beautiful by stretch of metaphor.
The same consideration applies to moral beauty. All three
types of character partake in the highest ideal of satisfaction
possible for actual realization, and in this sense can be termed
that beauty which provides the final contentment for the Eros
of the Universe.

For European thought, the effective expression of this
critical discontent, which is the gadfly of civilization, has been
provided by Hebrew and Greek thought. Its most adequate
expression, so far as concerns literary delicacy and definition
of the issues involved, is to be found in Plato’s dialogues.
We there find him criticizing the customary gods of the
poets — indeed he would banish all poets — and analysing the
capacities latent in the human soul. The religion of Plato is
founded on his conception of what a God can be, with gaze
fixed upon forms of eternal beauty; and his sociology is
derived from his conception of what man can be, in virtue
of a nature, which for its full description requires terms ap¬
plicable to the nature of gods. Between them, the Hebrews
and the Greeks provided a programme for discontent. But the
value of their discontent lies in the hope which never deserted
their glimpses of perfection.

Section II. The intellectual agencies involved in the
modification of epochs are the proper subject of this book.
When we examine them we find a rough division into two
types, one of general ideas, the other of highly specialized
notions. Among the former, there are the ideas of high
generality expressing conceptions of the nature of things, of
the possibilities of human society, of the final aim which
should guide the conduct of individual men. In each age of
the world distinguished by high activity there will be found
at its culmination, and among the agencies leading to that
culmination, some profound cosmological outlook, implicitly

14

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

accepted, impressing its own type upon the current springs
of action. This ultimate cosmology is only partly expressed,
and the details of such expression issue into derivative
specialized questions of violent controversy. The intellectual
strife of an age is mainly concerned with these latter questions
of secondary generality which conceal a general agreement
upon first principles almost too obvious to need expression,
and almost too general to be capable of expression. In each
period there is a general form of the forms of thought; and,
like the air we breathe, such a form is so translucent, and so
pervading, and so seemingly necessary, that only by extreme
effort can we become aware of it.

In order to find an example capable of ready expression,
we must descend below the utmost generality. In the region
of political theory, consider the divergence of outlook in the
classical Mediterranean civilization. Think of the differences
between Pericles and Cleon, Plato and Alexander the Great,
Marius and Sulla, Cicero and Caesar. Yet they all agreed in
one fundamental notion which lies at the base of all political
theory. Throughout the Hellenic and Hellenistic Roman
civilizations — those civilizations which we term ‘classical’ —
it was universally assumed that a large slave population was
required to perform services which were unworthy to engage
the activities of a fully civilized man. In other words in that
epoch a civilized community could not be self-sustaining. A
comparatively barbarous substratum had to be interwoven
in the social structure, so as to sustain the civilized apex.
This assumption that a complex urban civilization requires
a base of slavery was so universal, both in practice and in
implicit presuppositions, that we may assume it to be derived
from some well-founded reason in the conditions permitting
the formation of the earlier phases of civilized life. The
Egyptians wanted bricks, so they captured the Hebrews.

THE HUMAN SOUL

J5

The confusion of tongues associated with the tower of Babel
may be historically doubtful in the form of the surviving
legend : it is at least well-found as a reference to the confusion
of races amid the slave populations supplying the mechanized
man-power for the building of cities.

Now in respect to the political factions of the ancient
world nothing has yet been settled. Every problem which
Plato discusses is still alive to-day. Yet there is a vast differ¬
ence between ancient and modern political theories. For we
differ from the ancients on the one premise on which they
were all agreed. Slavery was the presupposition of political
theorists then; Freedom is the presupposition of political
theorists now. In those days the penetrating minds found
a difficulty in reconciling their doctrine of slavery to certain
plain facts of moral feeling and of sociological practice ; and
in these days our sociological speculations find a difficulty
in reconciling our doctrine of freedom to another group of
plain facts, perplexing, irreconcilable, only to be conceived
as a hateful brute necessity. Yet, when all such qualifica¬
tions have been made, Freedom and Equality constitute an
inevitable presupposition for modern political thought, with
an admixture of subsequent lame qualification; while Slavery
was a corresponding presupposition for the ancients, with
their admixture of lame qualification. For both sets of
thinkers God has been a great resource: a lot of things,
which won’t work on Earth, can be conceived as true in his
sight. Ancients and Moderns in respect to this question face
in directly opposite directions.

Section III. This growth of the idea of the essential
rights of human beings, arising from their sheer humanity,
affords a striking example in the history of ideas. Its forma¬
tion and its effective diffusion can be reckoned as a triumph
— a chequered triumph — of the later phase of civilization.

i6

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

We shall find out how general ideas arise and are diffused, if
we examine the sort of history which belongs to this particular
instance.

The great classical civilization is remarkable for two facts.
First, it constituted a culmination of slavery, especially at
the height of the Roman Empire. At that moment slavery
reached its height, in necessity, in quantity, in horror, and
in danger. In earlier, simpler communities slavery may have
been conceived as an accidental mercy, a favour granted to
a few fortunate communities or to a few foriunate indi¬
viduals within any community. But for a thousand years of
the classical civilization, to be civilized was to be a slave¬
owner. Some slave-owners were kind, some were brutal:
probably, they were mostly mediocre. In Plato’s Symposium
Agathon, the host, is represented with a uniform well-bred
kindliness both towards his slaves and his guests. Cicero
and the younger Pliny exhibit themselves in their Letters as
kindly masters. But on the whole the Roman capitalists
with their vast estates exemplify the necessity for ancient
civilization that it be built upon iniquity. Efficiency spelt
Brutality. When such evils culminate, either they are cor¬
rected by the introduction of some new principle, or they
destroy society. In the case of the classical civilizations, these
alternatives were not exclusive: they both happened.

We now come to the second fact for which the classical
period was remarkable. It was the first period which in¬
troduced moral principles forming an effective criticism of
the whole system. The Athenians were slave-owners: but
they seem to have humanized the institution. Plato was an
aristocrat by birth and by conviction, also he must have
owned slaves. But it is difficult to read some of his Dialogues
without an uneasy feeling about the compulsory degradation
of mankind. Also the Stoic lawyers of the Roman Empire

THE HUMAN SOUL

17

introduced a legal reformation largely motived by the prin¬
ciple that human nature has essential rights. But neither the
humane slave-owners, nor the inspired Plato, nor the clear¬
headed lawyers, initiated any campaign against slavery.
They accepted it as a matter of course. It was presupposed
in the very structure of society; and such necessity limits the
scope of all generalities. Distinctions were introduced, the
sort of distinctions which are conclusive so long as you know
that in practice you have got to accept them.

We see here the first stage of the introduction of great
ideas. They start as speculative suggestions in the minds of
a small, gifted group. They acquire a limited application to
human life at the hands of various sets of leaders with
special functions in the social structure. A whole literature
arises which explains how inspiring is the general idea, and
how slight need be its effect in disturbing a comfortable
society. Some transition has been produced by the agency
of the new idea. But on the whole the social system has been
inoculated against the full infection of the new principle. It
takes its place among the interesting notions which have a
restricted application.

But a general idea is always a danger to the existing
order. The whole bundle of its conceivable special embodi¬
ments in various usages of society constitutes a programme of
reform. At any moment the smouldering unhappiness of
mankind may seize on some such programme and initiate a
period of rapid change guided by the light of its doctrines.
In this way, the conception of the dignity of human nature
was quietly energizing in the minds of Roman officials,
producing somewhat better government and nerving men
like Marcus Aurelius to rise to the height of their appointed
task. It was a worthy moral force, but society had been
inoculated against its revolutionary application. For six hun-

wi

2

i8

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

dred years, the ideal of the intellectual and moral grandeur
of the human soul had haunted the ancient Mediterranean
world. It had in a way transformed the moral ideas of man¬
kind: it had readjusted religions: and yet it had failed to
close with the basic weakness of the civilization in which it
flourished. It was the faint light of the dawn of a new
order of life.

Section IV. In the midst of this period of progress and
decadence, Christianity arose. In its early form it was a
religion of fierce enthusiasm and of impracticable moral
ideals. Luckily these ideals have been preserved for us in a
literature which is almost contemporary with the origin of
the religion. They have constituted an unrivalled programme
for reform, which has been one element in the evolution of
Western civilization. The progress of humanity can be
defined as the process of transforming society so as to make
the original Christian ideals increasingly practicable for its
individual members. As society is now constituted a literal
adherence to the moral precepts scattered throughout the
Gospels would mean sudden death.

Christianity rapidly assimilated the Platonic doctrine of
the human soul. The philosophy and the religion were very
congenial to each other in their respective teachings; al¬
though, as was natural, the religious version was much more
specialized than the philosophic version. We have here an
example of the principle that dominates the history of ideas.
There will be a general idea in the background flittingly,
waveringly, realized by the few in its full generality — or
perhaps never expressed in any adequate universal form with
persuasive force. Such persuasive expression depends on the
accidents of genius; for example, it depends on the chance
that a man like Plato appears. But this general idea, whether
expressed or implicitly just below the surface of conscious-

THE HUMAN SOUL

19

ness, embodies itself in special expression after special ex¬
pression. It condescends so as to lose the magnificence of its
generality, but it gains in the force of its peculiar adaptation
to the concrete circumstances of a particular age. It is a
hidden driving force, haunting humanity, and ever appear¬
ing in specialized guise as compulsory on action by reason
of its appeal to the uneasy conscience of the age. The force
of the appeal lies in the fact that the specialized principle of
immediate conduct exemplifies the grandeur of the wider
truth arising from the very nature of the order of things, a
truth which mankind has grown to the stature of being able
to feel though perhaps as yet unable to frame in fortunate
expression.

The greatness of Christianity — the greatness of any valu¬
able religion — consists in its ‘interim ethics’. The founders
of Christianity and their earlier followers firmly believed
that the end of the world was at hand. The result was that
with passionate earnestness they gave free reign to their
absolute ethical intuitions respecting ideal possibilities with¬
out a thought of the preservation of society. The crash of
society was certain and imminent. ‘Impracticability’ was a
word which had lost its meaning; or rather, practical good
sense dictated concentration on ultimate ideas. The last things
had arrived: intermediate stages were of no account.

This consideration was of more influence in framing the
mentality of the earlier followers than in the initial founda¬
tion of the religion. It enabled these followers to transmit
in their full purity the primitive notions. But the religion
arose in a more tranquil atmosphere although highly
sensitive in regard to religious emotion, and with some
admixture of apocalyptic belief. The Galilean peasantry,
having regard to their climate and simplicity of life, were
neither rich nor poor: they were unusually intellectual for

20

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

a peasantry, by reason of their habits of study of historical
and religious records : they were protected from disturbance,
from within or from without, by the guardian structure of
the Roman Empire. They had no responsibility for the
maintenance of this complex system. Their own society was
of the simplest; and they were ignorant of the conditions by
which the Empire arose, of the conditions requisite for its
efficiency, and of the conditions necessary for its preserva¬
tion. They were ignorant even of the services which the
Empire was rendering them. The alternation of procurators
was like that of the seasons, some were better and some were
worse; but all alike, seasons and procurators of Judaea, issued
from an inscrutable order of things.

The tone of life of this peasantry provided an ideal en¬
vironment in which concepts of ideal relations between
rational beings could be formulated — concepts devoid of
ferocity, concepts gracious, kindly, and shrewd, concepts in
which mercy prevailed over judicial classification. In this
ideal world forgiveness could be stretched to seventy times
seven, whereas in the real world of the Herods and the
Roman Empire a sevenfold forgiveness touched upon the
impracticable. But the Galilean people were unconcerned
with the discipline of the Roman legions, with the imperial
inspection of the doings of proconsuls, and with the com¬
plexities of a legal system which was to impose an order
upon multitudinous transactions, stretching from the hills
of Scotland to the marshes of Mesopotamia. A gracious,
simple mode of life, combined with a fortunate ignorance,
endowed mankind with its most precious instrument of
progress — the impracticable ethics of Christianity.

A standard had now been created, expressed in concrete
illustrations fool-proof against perversions. This standard is
a gauge by which to test the defects of human society. So

THE HUMAN SOUL

21

long as the Galilean images are but the dreams of an un¬
realized world, so long they must spread the infection of an
uneasy spirit.

Section V. In ethical ideals we find the supreme example
of consciously formulated ideas acting as a driving force
effecting transitions from social state to social state. Such
ideas are at once gadflies irritating, and beacons luring, the
victims among whom they dwell. The conscious agency of
such ideas should be contrasted with senseless forces, floods,
barbarians, and mechanical devices. The great transitions
are due to a coincidence of forces derived from both sides
of the world, its physical and its spiritual natures. Mere
physical nature lets loose a flood, but it requires intelligence
to provide a system of irrigation.

The ethical ideas, embodied in the great religions, Chris¬
tianity for instance, though representing a high approach to
final generality, are yet specializations of the Platonic gen¬
erality. Partly these ethical intuitions are a direct appli¬
cation of metaphysical doctrine for the determination of
practice. The ethical principle is then a parable illuminating
the superior generality on which it depends. Thus the codes
of all religions also embody the particular temperaments and
stages of civilization of their adherents. No religion can be
considered in abstraction from its followers, or even from
its various types of followers. Religious ideas represent
highly specialized forms of general notions. Sometimes
these specializations are concrete embodiments with pecu¬
liar beauty and aptness: sometimes they are the result of a
throw back to barbaric brutality. Neither religions nor in¬
dividual men demonstrate their sanctity by their ejacula¬
tions. We find however this whole bundle of more special
notions, legal, political, ethical, religious, driving forward
human life, and deriving a force of grandeur from their

22

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

various exemplifications of the mystery of the human soul
in its journey toward the source of all harmony. It is a
story of crime, misunderstanding, profanation. Great ideas
enter into reality with evil associates and with disgusting
alliances. But the greatness remains, nerving the race in its
slow ascent.

In the Middle Ages institutional Christianity was honour¬
ably distinguished as a driving force toward the grander
intuitions. Unfortunately, in accordance with the habits of
all institutions, it adapted itself to its environment. It be¬
came an instrument of conservation instead of an instrument
of progress. After a short period of progressive energy, the
Reformation Churches again accepted the same idolatrous
role. On the whole, well-established religious institutions are
to be reckoned among the conservative forces of society.
They soon become the grand support of what Clement had
termed ‘communal custom’. But the ultimate ideals, of
which they profess themselves the guardians, are a standing
criticism of current practices.

Accordingly the next resurgence of the notion of the
essential greatness of the human soul is associated with the
sceptical humanitarianism of the eighteenth century. We
have arrived at the Age of Reason and the Rights of Man.
This great French age of thought has remade the pre¬
suppositions of the civilized world, in speculation, in science,
and in sociological premises. It was derived from the
English thought of the seventeenth century, Francis Bacon,
Isaac Newton, and John Locke. Also it gained inspiration
from the English revolutions of the same epoch. But the
English modes always retained the note of insularity. The
French broadened, clarified, and universalized. They thus

made world-wide, ideas which such a man as Edmund

* «

THE HUMAN SOUL 23

Burke could only grasp in their application to one race, and
even at times to one island.

But the thought of John Locke survived also in England.
Its influence was reinforced by the general pride in the
doctrines of freedom embodied in the English Common
Law. There was thus a Whiggish tinge even to Tory Parlia¬
ments in those days. In this way the British Government
was the first government to make effective two decisive steps
in the abolition of slavery. Two parliaments determined the
new policies. They were composed of aristocratic land-
owners and evangelical bankers and merchants, one parlia¬
ment Tory and the other Whig. The first step was the
abolition of the British slave-trade in 1808, and the second
step was the purchase and freeing of all slaves in the British
Dominions in the year 1833. This latter operation cost twenty
million pounds at a time of grave financial difficulty.

But the problem was comparatively simple for the English
people. None the less this action constituted a foretaste of
the final triumph of that same wavering alliance of philo¬
sophy, law, and religion which had its first success in the
reforms of the Roman Imperial system. We notice that a
great idea in the background of dim consciousness is like
a phantom ocean beating upon the shores of human life in
successive waves of specialization. A whole succession of
such waves are as dreams slowly doing their work of sapping
the base of some cliff of habit: but the seventh wave is
a revolution — ‘And the nations echo round5. In the last
quarter of the eighteenth century, Democracy was born, with
its earliest incarnations in America and in France; and finally
it was Democracy that freed the slaves. In the modern
world, Democracy has a deeper import than among the
ancients. At last, in the nineteenth century, the fundamental

24

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

question of slavery has been explicitly faced. In Europe,
it was already a decaying institution, slowly withdrawing
from slavery to serfdom, from serfdom to feudalism, from
feudalism to aristocracy, from aristocracy to legal equality,
from legal equality to careers effectively open to talent. But
the question was assuming a new and menacing form by
reason of the impact of the European and Arabian races upon
the African tribes.

So modern Democrats, in the nineteenth century, nerved
themselves to face the question of Slavery, explicitly and
with thoroughness. The slow working of ideas is thereby
illustrated. Two thousand years had elapsed since the foun¬
dation of Plato’s Academy, since the reforms of the Stoic
lawyers, since the composition of the Gospels. The great
programme of reform bequeathed by the classical civilization
was achieving another triumph.

Section VI. The slow issue of general ideas into practical
consequences is not wholly due to inefficiency of human
character. There is a problem to be solved, and its com¬
plexity is habitually ignored by impetuous seekers. The
difficulty is just this: It may be impossible to conceive a
reorganization of society adequate for the removal of some
admitted evil without destroying the social organization and
the civilization which depends on it. An allied plea is that
there is no known way of removing the evil without the
introduction of worse evils of some other type.

Such arguments are usually implicit. Even the wisest are
unable to conceive the possibility of untried forms of social
relations. Human nature is so complex that paper plans
for society are to the statesman not worth even the price of
the defaced paper. Successful progress creeps from point to
point, testing each step. It is not difficult to frame the sort
of defence that Cicero would have advanced, if challenged

THE HUMAN SOUL

25

on the question of slavery. The Roman Government, he
would have said, is the one hope for the human race. De¬
stroy Rome; and Where will you find the firmness of the
Roman Senate, the discipline of its legions, the wisdom of
its lawyers, the restraints upon misgovernment, the appre¬
ciative protection of Greek learning? But he would not have
said this. His genius would have risen to prophecy, and he
would have foreseen and quoted the lines of Virgil on the
mission of the Eternal City.

In fact, we do know exactly the stand taken upon this
very question by the lawyers, Pagan and Christian, and by
the bishops and popes, of the five centuries succeeding
Cicero. Among them were statesmen with more than
Cicero’s practical sagacity, and his equals in moral sensi¬
bility. They introduced careful legal restraints upon the
powers of the masters; they protected some of the essential
rights of slaves. But they preserved the institution. Civili¬
zation, Hellenic and Roman, was preserved intact for more
than seven centuries after the death of Plato. The slaves
were the martyrs whose toil made progress possible. There
is a famous statue of a Scythian slave sharpening a knife.
His body is bent, but his glance is upward. That figure has
survived the ages, a message to us of what we owe to the
suffering millions in the dim past.

We may ask, Would Rome have been destroyed by a
crusade for the abolition of slavery in the time of Cicero
or in the time of Augustus? Throughout the whole period
of classical civilization the foundations of social order could
scarcely sustain the weight upon them — the wars between
states, the surrounding barbarians, the political convulsions,
the evils of the slave system. In the age from the birth of
Cicero to the accession of Augustus to undisputed power,
the whole structure almost collapsed, before it had finished

26

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

its appointed task. Even earlier, it had nearly met its fate,
and later by a few centuries came the final collapse. It is
impossible to doubt the effect of any vigorous effort for the
immediate abolition of the only social system that men knew.
It may be better that the heavens should fall, but it is folly
to ignore the fact that they will fall.

Suppose that, in the middle of the nineteenth century,
the shock that overwhelmed the Confederate States in the
American Civil War had equally overwhelmed the whole
of North America and the whole of Europe. The sole hope
of progressive civilization would have been lost. We may
speculate about a recovery, but of that we know nothing.
In the ancient world, the dangers were immeasurably
greater.

Section VII. The argument of the previous section can
be generalized. It amounts to this: that the final intro¬
duction of a reform does not necessarily prove the moral
superiority of the reforming generation. It certainly does
require that that generation exhibits reforming energy. But
conditions may have changed, so that what is possible now
may not have been possible then. A great idea is not to be
conceived as merely waiting for enough good men to carry
it into practical effect. That is a childish view of the history of
ideas. The ideal in the background is promoting the gradual
growth of the requisite communal customs, adequate to sustain
the load of its exemplification.

Many factors contributed to the final inversion of socio¬
logical theory, from the presupposition of slavery to the
presupposition of freedom. The chief factor has already been
mentioned, namely, the sceptical, humanitarian movement
of the eighteenth century, of which Voltaire and Rousseau
were among the chief exponents, and the French Revolution
the culmination.

THE HUMAN SOUL

27

Thus in a sense, and more especially when we consider
the whole world-wide movement, religion was in the back¬
ground. But in one section of this stirring of mankind the
religious motive was among the chief agencies. Through¬
out the Anglo-Saxon world, English and American, the
Wesleyan protestant revival was in full activity. It had been
reserved for a great French historian, Elie Halevy, to point
out the full sociological significance of this episode. The
Methodist preachers aimed at saving men’s souls in the next
world, but incidentally they gave a new direction to emotions
energizing in this world. The movement was singularly
devoid of new ideas, and singularly rich in vivid feelings.
It is the first decisive landmark indicating the widening
chasm between the theological tradition and the modern
intellectual world. From the earliest Greek theologians to
Jerome and Augustine: from Augustine to Aquinas: from
Aquinas to Luther, Calvin, and Suarez: from Suarez to
Leibniz and John Locke: every great religious movement
was accompanied by a noble rationalistic justification. You
may disagree with the theologians — indeed it is impossible
to agree with all of them — but you cannot complain that
they have been unwilling to indulge in rational argument.
The Middle Ages argued, Luther defended ninety-seven
theses, Calvin produced his Institute, the Council of Trent
argued on and off for eighteen years, the judicious Hooker
argued, at the Synod of Dort Arminians and Calvinists
argued.

The great Methodist movement more than deserves the
eulogies bestowed on it. But it can appeal to no great in¬
tellectual construction explanatory of its modes of under¬
standing. It may have chosen the better way. Its instinct
may be sound. However that may be, it was a notable event
in the history of ideas when the clergy of the western

28

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

races began to waver in their appeal to constructive reason.
More recently scientists and critical philosophers have fol¬
lowed the Methodist example.

In an age of aristocracy in England, the Methodists ap¬
pealed to the direct intuitions of working men and of retail
traders concerned with working men. In America they
appealed to the toiling, isolated groups of pioneers. They
brought hope, fear, emotional release, spiritual insight. They
stemmed the inroads of revolutionary ideas. Also, allowing
for many qualifications, they must be credited with one
supreme achievement. They made the conception of the
brotherhood of man and of the importance of men a vivid
reality. They had produced the final effective force which
hereafter made slavery impossible among progressive races.

In the history of ideas the great danger is over-simpli¬
fication. It is true that the Methodists produced the final
wave of popular feeling which drove the anti-slavery move¬
ment to success. But the Methodist movement succeeded
because it came at the right time. In this section we are
discussing the religious influences. During the sixteenth,
seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries the Church of Rome
— to use a Quaker phrase — had a ‘concern5 for the races,
groaning under European exploitation, which far surpassed
that of the combined Protestant churches. The priests did
not consider the problem in terms of human freedom. But,
not to speak of the rest of the world, in America alone
the heroism of the Catholic missionaries extended their
self-sacrifice from the northern to the southern icefields. It
is impossible to doubt but that their example kept alive a
sensitiveness of the European conscience respecting the obli¬
gations of men to men.

Neither the Catholics, nor the Methodists, gave the first

THE HUMAN SOUL

29

modern formulation of an explicit purpose to procure the
abolition of slavery. This supreme honour belongs to the
Quakers, and in particular to that Apostle of Human Free¬
dom, John Woolman. Also the American Civil War was the
tremendous episode constituting the climax of this sombre
journey of civilization toward the light.

Thus in the evolution of the strands of thought which
constituted the final stage in the destruction of the iniquitous
slave-foundation of civilization, there is interwoven the
insights and the heroisms of sceptical humanitarians, of
Catholics, of Methodists, of Quakers. But the intellectual
origin of the movement is to be traced back for more than
two thousand years to the speculations of the philosophical
Greeks upon functions of the human soul, and its status in
the world of flux.

Section VIII. In this chapter the story of the translation
of the Greek metaphysical speculations into the sociological
concept of human freedom has been only half told. In the
next chapter I shall consider in more detail some nineteenth-
century criticisms of this whole movement towards De¬
mocracy and Freedom. But, so far as it has gone, the story
illustrates the extreme difficulty of expressing in language the
final generalities. The importance of man as the supreme
example of a living organism is beyond question. Yet when
we try to express the general notions thus involved, and
their bearing upon conduct, at every step controversy arises.
The immense history of Plato’s metaphysical concept of the
soul, with its influence on religion, and on social theory,
carries this moral decisively.

Human life is driven forward by its dim apprehension
of notions too general for its existing language. Such ideas
cannot be grasped singly, one by one in isolation. They

30

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

require that mankind advances in its apprehension of the
general nature of things, so as to conceive systems of ideas
elucidating each other. But the growth of generality of
apprehension is the slowest of all evolutionary changes. It
is the task of philosophy to promote this growth in men¬
tality. In so far as there is success, the specialized applica¬
tions of great ideas are purified from their gross associations
with savage fancies. The Carthaginians were a great civilized
trading nation. They belonged racially to one of the great
progressive sections of mankind. They traded from the shores
of Syria, throughout the Mediterranean Sea, up the Atlantic
Coast of Europe, to the tin mines of Cornwall in England.
They circumnavigated Africa. They ruled Spain and Sicily
and North Africa. Yet, when Plato was speculating, this
great people could so conceive the supreme powers of the
Universe that they sacrificed their children to Moloch as
an act of religious propitiation. The growth in generality of
understanding makes such savagery impossible in corre¬
sponding civilizations to-day.

Human Sacrifice, Human Slavery are instances of great
intuitions of religion and of civilized purposes expressing
themselves by means of inherited brutalities of instinctive
behaviour. Direct religious intuitions, even those of the
purest origin, are in danger of allying themselves with lower
practices and emotions which in fact pervade existing society.
Religion lends a driving force to philosophy. But in its turn,
Speculative philosophy guards our higher intuitions from base
alliances by its suggestions of ultimate meanings, disengaged
from the facts of current modes of behaviour.

The history of ideas is a history of mistakes. But through
all mistakes it is also the history of the gradual purification
of conduct. When there is progress in the development of
favourable order, we find conduct protected from relapse

THE HUMAN SOUL

31

into brutalization by the increasing agency of ideas con¬
sciously entertained. In this way Plato is justified in his
saying, The creation of the world — that is to say, the world
of civilized order — is the victory of persuasion over force.

CHAPTER HI

THE HUMANITARIAN IDEAL

Section I. In the previous chapter we considered the com¬
bined influence of philosophy, law, and religion, upon the
evolution from the notion of society based upon servitude
to that of society based upon individual freedom. To this
transformation philosophy contributed its generality, law
contributed the constructive ability, religion the moral
energy. By themselves and apart from correction by the
Platonic philosophy, the religions derived from Western
Asia were tinged with the mentality of the older civilizations
of that region. They conceived the universe in terms of
despots and slaves. None of these religions have been able
wholly to shake off the horrible implications latent in such
a conception. But the fortunate coalescence of the initial
Christian institutions with the philosophic Platonic doctrines
provided the W estern Races with a beautiful sociological ideal,
intellectually expressed, and closely allied with intermittent
bursts of emotional energy. Unfortunately, interwoven with
this ideal in Christian theology and in the patterns of Christian
emotion, there has survived throughout history the older
concept of a Divine Despot and a slavish Universe, each with
the morals of its kind.

The theme of the former chapter has been the agency of
these sociological ideals in the transformation of society.
They constitute the intellectual side of the transformation,
combined with an explanation how such intellectual con-

THE HUMANITARIAN IDEAL

33

cepts acquired driving force. In the present chapter we
first glance at accessory causes, and then proceed to the
criticism of the humanitarian ideal, a criticism which has
been gathering strength since its origin in the nineteenth
century. Finally, the barest sketch of a reply to this criticism
is suggested.

The growth of technology is the greatest among the ac¬
cessory causes which weakened the necessity for slavery. But
this agency hardly came into play before the seventeenth
century. Till that time the technology of the ancients, in
their prime, probably surpassed that of the moderns. From
that century onward, technological advance has more than
satisfied the complex demands for effective labour, without
recourse to slavery. Of course, the fixed order of society in
a well-managed feudal system must not be confused with
slavery, even in its application to the agricultural labourers
at the base of the whole structure. Each order had its rights
and duties, and in the happier examples of later feudalism
the villagers were quite competent to go to law with their
feudal chief. The system was very liable to degenerate into
practical slavery, and often did so. Indeed, there is evidence1
that, during the early Norman period in England, there was
a relatively small class of slaves whose lives were at the
arbitrary will of their owners. But the slave-trade shocked
the conscience of those times. William the Conqueror legis¬
lated against it, and Bishops denounced it. In those times,
it must be remembered, to be attached to the land was a
protection as well as a restriction. It was the basis of a
recognized status in an organized society — so far as the
social system was organized, and was not a welter of
violence.

1 Cf. Mediaeval England, pp. ioo, ioi, by Mary Bateson; T. Fisher Unwin,
London 1903, and G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York.

Wl

3

34

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

The modern evolution of big business involves a closer
analogy to feudalism than does feudalism to slavery. In
fact, the modern social system with its variety of indispen¬
sable, interlocked avocations necessitates such organization.
The only questions at issue are the freedom of individuals
to circulate among the grades, and satisfactory legal con¬
ceptions of the variety of relations of the grades with each
other. Individualists and socialists are merely debating over
the details of the neo-feudalism which modern industry re¬
quires. The self-sufficing independent man, with his peculiar
property which concerns no one else, is a concept without
any validity for modern civilization. Unfortunately this
notion has been embodied in ancient moral codes applicable
to Syrian deserts, and has reappeared tingeing western poli¬
tical theory in the commercial epoch immediately succeeding
the decay of mediaeval feudalism. But it is not the practicable
alternative to a slave society. The problem of social life is
the problem of the co-ordination of activities, including the
limits of such co-ordination.

The sense of the unity of civilization fostered by the
Catholic Church, the general similarities of mankind
throughout Europe, and the simplicities of life in the Middle
Ages, are probably the main reasons why mediaeval wars were
dissociated from slave-raiding expeditions. We hear of Saxon
slaves in the slave-market in Rome. But that was in the
life-time of Gregory the Great, and the Saxons were not
Christians. Indeed, whenever the European races came into
contact with non-Christian foreign races, they seem to have
had no compunction about slavery. We read of Saracen
slaves, of the enslavement of the indigenous American tribes,
and, above all, of negro slavery. But thanks to the growth
of technology concurrently with the advance of civilization,
the European races have avoided slavery in temperate

THE HUMANITARIAN IDEAL

35

climates. Finally, the humanitarian movement of the eigh¬
teenth century, combined with a religious sense of the
kinship of men, has issued in the settled policy of the great
civilized governments to extirpate slavery from the world.

Section II. This success came only just in time. For
before and during the nineteenth century, several strands of
thought emerged whose combined effect was in direct oppo¬
sition to the humanitarian ideal. At the moment when the
‘brotherhood of man’ triumphed, the intellectual world was
meditating on political economy conceived in terms of un¬
restrained competition, on Malthus5 iron law that the mass
of the population must always press on the limits of bare
subsistence, and on the zoological law of natural selection
by which an iron environment crushed out the less favoured
species, and on Hume’s criticism of the notion of the soul.
This new trend of thought was in its immediate origin
British and is to be compared and contrasted with the ante¬
cedent Wesleyan movement. In neither case did the leaders
intend the sociological effects which followed from their
efforts. It is often the case that the originators belong to
the antecedent epoch, and stand outside the epoch of their
followers. The Methodist preachers did not intend to trans¬
form society, their object was to save souls. In like manner,
Adam Smith was a typical figure of the eighteenth century
enlightenment.

He and Hume are two of the last great Scotchmen who
mark the traditional affiliation of Scotland with France,
which had survived from the earlier centuries of joint an¬
tagonism to England. At their date the intellectual life of
Edinburgh and Glasgow is not to be assimilated with that
of England. Throughout the greater part of the eighteenth
century, during its central portion, the intellectual life of
England, so far as concerns any originative energy, is neg-

3-2

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

36

ligible. Indeed, one of the reasons for the separation of
America from England was that the particular circum¬
stances of English life were not applicable to America, and
that England was not fermenting with any universal ideas
capable of specialization for American conditions. English
influence survived, it is true, in the Common Law; but,
apart from that exception, the mentality of men like Jefferson
and Franklin was French. There was the homeland of their
thoughts. It has required the whole of the activity of the
nineteenth century, from 1790 onward, to reconstruct the
intellectual influence of England on the outside world. In
the eighteenth century, France looked to England; but it
was to the England of the seventeenth century, Bacon,
Newton, Locke and the Regicides. In order to understand
the intellectual history of Europe, it is essential to remember
the collapse of Germany during and after the Thirty Years5
War, to remember the collapse of Italy owing to the super-
session of the Mediterranean trade route to the East, owing
to the Catholic Reaction with its activity of censorship, and
owing to the domination of Spaniards and Habsburgs, and
to remember the collapse of England owing to absorption in
the commercial expansion of the eighteenth century — in the
words of the old song, ‘When George and pudding- time
came round5. In the eighteenth century France carried the
‘White Man’s Burden5 of intellectual advance.

Perhaps it was owing to the loss of the habit of speculative
thoroughness, that in the revival of intellectual activity in
England the issue of the emerging lines of thought was not
discerned. Hume’s flux of impressions and of reactions to
impressions, each impression a distinct, self-sufficient exist¬
ence, was very different to the Platonic soul. The status of
man in the universe required re-considering. ‘What is man

THE HUMANITARIAN IDEAL 37

that thou art mindful of him?’ The brotherhood of man
at the top of creation ceased to be the well-defined founda¬
tion for moral principles. There seems no very obvious
reason why one flux of impressions should not be related
to another flux of impressions in the relative status of master
to slave. To put the matter at its very lowest, the point re¬
quires arguing. It is no answer to point out that Hume and
Huxley were united in their dislike of slavery — certainly
Huxley, probably Hume. The question is what reason could
they give, apart from their own psychological inheritance
from the Platonic religious tradition. For example, in
Book III, of his Treatise , Part II, Section I, Hume writes,
“In general, it may be affirm’d that there is no such passion
in human minds, as the love of mankind, merely as such,
independent of personal qualities, or services, or of relation
to ourself”. This sentence seems very remote from the
Catholic missionaries in America, from the Quaker John
Woolman, or from the free-thinking Thomas Paine. In
some mysterious way, they all cared for ‘mankind, merely
as such’.

Section III. In the Middle Ages of Europe the keynote
of sociological theory is ‘co-ordination’. The Church co-ordi¬
nated religious speculations; the Feudal System co-ordinated
the intimate structure of society; the Empire — or, Was it the
Church? Here dispute crept in — co-ordinated the Govern¬
ments of the provincial regions, Counts, Dukes, Kings,
and City-Republics. In the provinces of theology and of
clerical organization, the success was considerable. To a less
degree the Feudal System effected its purpose. No other
system can be suggested which at that time and in those
circumstances could have replaced it successfully: although
the towns with their commercial and artisan populations

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

38

stood outside it, more particularly in Italy. The Empire
was a failure mitigated by a few successes. The Church,
as an agent of large-scale political organization, was more
successful than the Empire. Its agents were better educated,
and — allowing for many exceptions — had a higher morale.
Also its influence extended to regions which the Empire
never reached. But, on the whole, the attempts at large-scale
organization of Europe were a failure. There is a pathetic
interest in Dante’s De Monarchia with its initial premise
of the desire of mankind for peace and quietness. We have
only to remember the state of Europe at that time, the state
of Italy, and Dante’s own life. Indeed, men do long for
peace and quietness but their desire is chequered by other
impulses. The Middle Ages were always haunted by the
ghost of the old Roman Empire, with its message of vast
success in the imposition of order upon men.

The Renaissance men read the classical authors, and de¬
cisively ignored the ideals of the Roman statesmen. Plato,
perhaps, would have been gratified by the attention his
works then received. But he would have been horrified at
the outburst of individualism. In the men of the Italian
Renaissance Plato would have recognized reproductions of
the character of the younger Dionysius of Syracuse. At the
time the incongruity was not perceived. But the inevitable
issues followed. Finally in the nineteenth century, amid the
triumph of humanitarian principles, the basic positions of
the social theories derived from Platonism and Christianity
were questioned. Previously, they had never been fully
acted on. They were impracticable. But they had not been
questioned as a social ideal.

Section IV. The collapse of the Middle Ages was, in one
of its aspects, a revolt against co-ordination. The new keynote
is expressed in the word ‘competition’ —

THE HUMANITARIAN IDEAL

39

‘Thou shalt not murder, but tradition
Approves all forms of competition.’

Private life now dominated the social life of Europe in all
its special forms — The Right of Private Judgment, Private
Property, The Competition of Private Traders, Private
Amusement. The notion that every action is at once a private
experience and a public utility had to be born again. It
sickened and died with the disappearance of the ‘mediaeval
mind’. Wherever men looked, they saw ‘competition’
written across the face of things. Nations arose, and men
thought of nations in terms of international competition.
They examined the theory of trade, and they construed its
interactions in terms of competition, mitigated by ‘higgling’.
They considered the bounty of nature in the provision of
food, and they saw the masses of mankind competing for
insufficient supplies. They saw the fecundity of nature in
the provision of a myriad species of living things, and they
construed the explanation in terms of the competition of
species. What the notions of ‘form’ and ‘harmony’ were
to Plato, that the notions of ‘individuality’ and ‘competi¬
tion’ were to the nineteenth century. God had placed his
bow in the skies as a symbol; and the strip of colours,
rightly read, spelt ‘competition’. The prize to be competed
for was ‘life’. Unsuccessful competitors died; and thus, by
a beautiful provision of nature, ceased from constituting a
social problem.

Now it is quite obvious that a much needed corrective
to an unqualified, sentimental humanitarianism is here
being supplied. Strife is at least as real a fact in the world as
Harmony. If you side with Francis Bacon and concentrate
on the efficient causes, you can interpret large features of
the growth of structure in terms of ‘strife’. If, with Plato,
you fix attention on the end, rationally worthy, you can

40

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

interpret large features in terms of ‘ harmony 5 . But until some
outline of understanding has been reached which elucidates
the interfusion of strife and harmony, the intellectual driving
force of successive generations will sway uneasily between
the two.

There have been many interpretations of special aspects
of European society in terms of strife: Machiavelli’s 'Prince5,
the political policies of the great Renaissance Monarchs,
Charles the Fifth, Philip the Second, Francis the First,
Henry the Eighth, Henri Quatre, William the Silent, Queen
Elizabeth. The people, thus indicated, found strife. They
could not evade it. Fleets, armies, hatreds, assassin's daggers,
burnings at the stake, insurrections were there as real present
facts. To survive, as persons or as nations, meant force and
policy suppressing competitors. Harmony crept in under the
guise of the joy of the adventure, of faculties stretched to
the full. But such harmony was a secondary effect, merely
Romance gilding Strife.

In the hands of theologians both in the Middle Ages and
in the first period of its supersession, the Platonic-Christian
tradition leant heavily towards its mystical religious side.
It abandoned this world to the Evil Prince thereof, and con¬
centrated thought upon another world and a better life.
Plato himself explicitly considers this solution at the end
of his dialogue, the Republic. But he there gives it another
twist to that adopted by later theologians. He conceives the
perfect R.epublic in Heaven as an immediate present pos¬
session in the consciousness of the wise in the temporal
world. Thus for Plato, at least in his mood when he con¬
cluded this dialogue, the joy of heaven is realizable on
earth: the wise are happy. Theoretically, this doctrine also
tinged mediaeval Christianity. But in practice there has
always been the temptation to abandon the immediate ex-

THE HUMANITARIAN IDEAL 41

perience of this world as a lost cause. The shadows pass —
says mystical Religion. But they also recur, and recur —
whispers the Experience of Mankind. Be tranquil, they
will end — rejoins Religion. The mystical religion which
most whole-heartedly adopts this attitude is Buddhism. In
it despair of this world is conjoined with a programme for the
world’s abolition by a mystic tranquility. Christianity has
wavered between Buddhistic renunciation and its own im¬
practicable ideals culminating in a crude Millennium within
the temporal flux. The difference between the two consists
in the difference between a programme for reform and a
programme for abolition. I hazard the prophecy that that
religion will conquer which can render clear to popular
understanding some eternal greatness incarnate in the passage
of temporal fact.

Section V. The political, liberal faith of the nineteenth
century was a compromise between the individualistic,
competitive doctrine of strife and the optimistic doctrine of
harmony. It was believed that the laws of the Universe were
such that the strife of individuals issued in the progressive
realization of a harmonious society. In this way, it was
possible to cherish the emotional belief in the Brotherhood
of Man, while engaging in relentless competition with all
individual men. Theoretically, it seemed possible to con¬
ciliate the belief with the practice without the intrusion of
contradiction. Unfortunately, while this liberalism was win¬
ning triumph after triumph as a political force in Europe
and America, the foundations of its doctrine were receiving
shock after shock.

The new industrial system, which should have been a
triumph for the liberal doctrines, did not work well. It
had first developed in England under treatment exclusively
dictated by the doctrines of economic liberalism. On this

42

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

point, in their treatment of the manufacturing and mining
industries, the English Tories at first were as orthodox as
the English Whigs. Unfortunately after two generations
of such industrial development, the widespread misery at
the base of the whole organization, in the mines, in the
factories, in the slums, aroused the public conscience. This
foundation of social relations upon individualism and com¬
petition, with no mitigating practices, was not working
well under the new industrial conditions, such as mining
for raw materials and mechanized manufacturing for finished
products. At least this judgment holds for the old, com¬
paratively crowded, nations of Europe. England was the
pioneer and tried the system whole-heartedly. It failed.
The evidence is scattered through the records of the two
decades from 1830 to 1850. For example, it can be found
summarized in any life of the Lord Shaftesbury of the
period — a great philanthropist — in some of Disraeli’s early
novels, in the joint writings of J. L. Hammond and Barbara
Hammond, dealing with the state of the labourers, town and
country. The mere doctrines of freedom, individualism, and
competition, had produced a resurgence of something very
like industrial slavery at the base of society.

The industrial politics of the nineteenth century in
Europe can only be understood by remembering this fact.
The pure doctrine of nineteenth-century liberalism failed.
During the decade of the eighteen forties and since, in
England and in every European country a series of remedial
industrial measures were introduced. The great liberal
leaders, Cobden, Bright, and even Gladstone, were either
opposed, or were notably cold, to these measures. They
infringed the purity of the liberal doctrine. The important
internal division of the political liberals in England was not
the prominent one between Radicals and Whigs. It was the

THE HUMANITARIAN IDEAL

43

division between the pure liberals and the modified liberals.
These modified liberals were in some ways nearer to the old
Tories. They repudiated the liberal doctrine of an atomistic
society. Unfortunately for the liberal political party in
England, its later leaders, Gladstone, Lord Hartington,
Asquith, belonged to the pure liberal faction. If Campbell-
Bannerman had been somewhat abler and, what is still
more important, if he had lived, political history in Eng¬
land would have been different. As it was, in the last phase,
English political liberalism under Asquith’s leadership was
engaged in direct opposition, or apathy, in respect to every
reform which it was the task of a reforming political party
to undertake — the Women’s movement, Education, In¬
dustrial Reorganization. During the seventy years of its
greatest triumphs, from 1830 onward, English liberalism was
slowly decaying by its failure to acquire a coherent system
of practicable ideals. On the whole, the pure liberals re¬
tained command of the political machine in England, from
Mr Gladstone in the last third of the nineteenth century to
Mr Asquith in the opening phase of the twentieth century.

Notwithstanding this reluctance of the great representa¬
tive liberals, before the middle of the century a whole new
movement of social co-ordination arose, in the form of
Governmental measures, regulative of mining, of factories, of
slum areas. The Industrial System then spread to Germany,
where the necessity for co-ordination and the failure of free
competition were at once taken for granted. The early form
of the industrial doctrine of liberalism was never even tried
in that country. But the modification of the liberal doctrines
came grudgingly; and its failure generated a new formula¬
tion of an old idea. Karl Marx proclaimed the doctrine of
‘The Class War5. The learned economists are unanimous
in telling us that Das Kapital does not express a sound scien-

44

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

tific doctrine, which will stand comparison with the facts.
The success of the book — for it is still with us as a power —
can then only be accounted for by the magnitude of the evils
ushered in by the first phase of the industrial revolution.

The early liberal faith that by the decree of benevolent
Providence individualistic competition and industrial ac¬
tivity would necessarily work together for human happiness
had broken down as soon as it was tried. Perhaps a more
enlightened training of the directing classes was required.
Then co-ordination should mainly be directed towards
education and sociological training: Perhaps, governmental
agency regulating the conditions of all employments was
the proper corrective: Perhaps the State, controlled by the
workers, should be the sole employer. All these suggestions
are still matters of fierce debate. In some country or other
almost every solution has been tried. But no one now holds
that, apart from some further directive agency, mere indivi¬
dualistic competition, of itself and by its own self-righting
character, will produce a satisfactory society.

Unfortunately, the Malthusian doctrine, in its popular
rendering, affirmed that as a law of nature the masses of
mankind could never emerge into a high state of well-being.
Still worse, biological science drew the conclusion that the
destruction of individuals was the very means by which
advance was made to higher types of species. This was the
famous doctrine of Natural Selection, promulgated in 1859,
by Charles Darwin. This exclusive reliance upon Natural
Selection was not characteristic of Darwin’s own theory.
For him, it was one agency among many others. But, in the
form in which the doctrine reigned in thought from that
day to this, Natural Selection was the sole factor to be
seriously considered. As applied to human society, this
theory is a challenge to the whole humanitarian movement.

THE HUMANITARIAN IDEAL 45

The contrast between the dominant theories of Lamarck
and Darwin made all the difference. Instead of dwelling
on the brotherhood of man, we are now directed to procure
the extermination of the unfit. Again the modern doctrines
of heredity, gained partly from the experience of breeders
of stock, partly from practical horticulturists, partly from
the statistical researches of Francis Galton, Karl Pearson,
and their school, partly from the laws of heredity discovered
by Mendel, the Austrian Abbot, who published his un¬
noticed researches contemporaneously with the publication
of Darwin’s Origin of Species — these doctrines have all
weakened the Stoic-Christian ideal of democratic brother¬
hood.

Religion by itself has always wavered between that con¬
ception and the despot-slaves conception of God and his
creatures. But the democratic liberalism of the late eigh¬
teenth and early nineteenth centuries was the triumph of
the Stoic-Christian strain of thought. In Hume’s criticism
of the doctrine of the soul, in the breakdown of pure un¬
mitigated competitive individualism as a practical working
system, in the Malthusian doctrine of the pressure of popu¬
lation on the means of subsistence, in the scientific doctrine
of the elimination of the unfit as the engine of progress, in
the Galtonian and Mendelian doctrines of heredity, in the
rejection of the Lamarckian doctrine that usage can raise the
standard of fitness — in the concurrence of all these strands
of thought the liberalism of the early nineteenth century lost
its security of intellectual justification.

Section VI. There are two intellectual movements to be
set on the other side of the account. One is Jeremy Bentham’s
legal reformation based on the Utilitarian Principle of
‘The Greatest Happiness of The Greatest Number’: the
other is Auguste Comte’s ‘Religion of Humanity’, that is to

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

46

say, Positivism. Most of what has been practically effective,
in morals, in religion, or in political theory, from their
day to this has derived strength from one or other of
these men. Their doctrines have been largely repudiated as
theoretical foundations, but as practical working principles
they dominate the world. On the whole, their influence 1ms
been democratic. They have swept away mysterious claims
of privileged orders of men, based on mystical intuitions
originated by religion or philosophy. They carried back to
the Roman Stoic lawyers, though they repudiated the ulti¬
mate metaphysical doctrines of Stoicism. They were in effect
a resurrection of this Stoic legal movement, but devoid of
its intellectual grandeur. From another point of view, they
recurred to the scientific revolt against metaphysics, led by
Newton, in the seventeenth century. They extended this
revolt to moral and political theory.

For two thousand years Platonic philosophic theories and
Christian intuitions had furnished the intellectual justifica¬
tion for the slow growth in Western Europe of emotions
of respect and friendliness between man and man — the
notion of brotherhood. These emotions are at the basis of all
social groups. As relatively blind emotions they must per¬
vade animal society, namely, the urge to co-operate, to help,
to feed, to cherish, to play together, to express affection.
Among mankind these fundamental feelings reign with
great strength within limited societies. But the range of
human intelligence — its very foresight as to dangers and
opportunities, the power of the imaginative entertaining of
differences between group and group, of their divergencies
of habit and sentiment — this range of intelligence has pro¬
duced a ferocity of inversion of this very sentiment of inter¬
racial benevolence. Mankind is distinguished by its strength
of tribal feeling, and conversely it is also distinguished by

THE HUMANITARIAN IDEAL

47

far-reaching malign exploitation and inter-tribal warfare.
Also the tribal feeling is apt to be chequered by limitations
of benevolence to special sections within the boundary of the
same community.

For two thousand years philosophy and religion had held
up before Western Europe the ideal figure of man, as man,
and had claimed for it a supreme worth. Under this urge,
Jesuits had gone to Patagonia, John Woolman had de¬
nounced slavery, Tom Paine had revolted against social
oppression and against the doctrine of original sin. These
Jesuits, these Quakers, and these Freethinkers differed
among themselves. But they owed their emotions towards
men, as men, to the generalization of feeling produced by
the joint influence of philosophy and religion.

Jeremy Bentham and Auguste Comte accepted these gene¬
ralized emotions as ultimate moral intuitions, clear matter
of fact, requiring no justification and requiring no ultimate
understanding of their relations to the rest of things. They
discarded metaphysics. In so doing, they effected an im¬
mense service to democratic liberalism. For they produced
a practicable programme of reform, and practicable modes of
expression which served to unite men whose ultimate notions
differed vastly.

Unfortunately, owing to the advance of scientific theory,
the relations of the emotions to the rest of things refused to
be ignored. In the evolution of life Nature is implacable:
Nature discriminates. Whence comes this universal bene¬
volence ‘The Religion of Humanity5 should be replaced by
a cult of a select assortment of Humanity: ‘The Greatest
Happiness of The Greatest Number5 should be replaced by
‘ The Humane Extinction of Inferior Specimens 5 . Hume denies
that there is any ‘ such passion ... as the love of mankind
merely as such5. Modern science gives a plausible explana-

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

48

tion why no such passion is required. It can only stand in
the way of the scavenging process of evolution. If any
people are subject to this passion, of course they will act on it.
But no reason can be given why we should inculcate the
passion in others, or why we should pervert legislation to
subserve the ends of such an unreasonable emotion. I am
certainly in greater sympathy with Bentham and Comte
than with this deduction from Hume and modern Zoology.
But, if it proves nothing else, the deduction does show that
Bentham and Comte were mistaken in thinking that they
had found a clear foundation for morals, religion, and legis¬
lation, to the exclusion of all ultimate cosmological prin¬
ciples. On the surface, their pet doctrines are just as liable
to sceptical attack as metaphysical dogmas ever were. They
have gained nothing in the way of certainty by dropping
Plato and Religion.

More ultimate reasons are required either to justify dis¬
criminations in the mixture, or to provide a reconstructed
justification for the doctrine of regard to man, as man.
Further mere ‘survival value’ is not sufficient: for there are
conditions which stamp out just those types which we find
ourselves most willing to preserve amid happiness.

Section VII. Auguste Comte founded his Positivism on
the assured results of science, the physical and moral science
of his own day. He died in 1857, and two years later
Darwin published his Origin of Species . We have already dis¬
cussed some of the difficulties for the Religion of Humanity
introduced by the subsequent phases of the Evolution
Theory. Such a foundation may be adequate to shape the
methodology of a group of men with limited interests at
some definite date. But certainly this adequacy does not
arise from any adequate clarity of the point of view. Many
a worshipper obtains his purpose of spiritual consolation by

THE HUMANITARIAN IDEAL

49

bowing towards the sunrise and muttering an incantation;
but he may be totally unable to render any coherent account
of the grounds, metaphysical or pragmatic, which render his
procedure effective.

Apart from this difficulty of conciliating the physical with
the mental sciences, physical science, taken by itself, has
some difficulty with its own fundamental notions. This per¬
plexity is relevant to Platonic religious tradition whose
fortunes and specializations we have been tracing. We can
classify the topics of physical science under four headings:
(i) The true and real things which endure, (2) The true
and real things which occur, (3) The abstract things which
recur, (4) The Laws of Nature. An example of the first
heading is a piece of rock, or — to pass beyond mere physical
science — the individuality of a human being, his soul, as
Plato would have it. An example of the second kind is any
happenings, in a street, in a room, in an animal body, or —
again to pass beyond mere physical science — our individual
complex experience within a tenth of a second. An example
of the third type is the shape of a rock. It seems doubtful
whether a shade of colour, or the qualitative element in the
performance of a musical symphony, are to be reckoned as
concerned with nature or mentality. But certainly they recur.
On the other hand a sort of feeling of affection is a recurrence
which belongs decidedly to the mental side of things. An
example of the fourth heading is the Law of Gravitation, or
the geometrical Relations of Things.

I am not going to plunge into a metaphysical discussion
at the close of a chapter, already sufficiently complex. But
it is relevant to point out, how superficial are our contro¬
versies on sociological theory apart from some more funda¬
mental determination of what we are talking about. The
four topics above at once suggest a host of perplexing ques-

4

wi

50

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

tions, which have puzzled thinkers from the time of Plato
to the present time. In these two chapters we have been
tracing the history of three very different types of thought,
(a) the Platonic-Religious ideas, (b) Individualistic, Com¬
petitive ideas of Commercial Society, (c) the idea of physical
science. Also each of these types involves internal com¬
plexities. Now we may hold, indeed I think we must hold,
that each of these strains of theory is the outcome of valid
intuitions and embodies truths about the nature of things
which cannot be set aside. It seems an easy solution to hold
that each type of idea is within its own sphere autonomous.
In that case, the controversies arise from the illegitimate
poaching of one type over the proper territory of some
other type. For example, it is fashionable to state that re¬
ligion and science can never clash because they deal with
different topics. I believe that this solution is entirely mis¬
taken. In this world at least, you cannot tear apart minds
and bodies. But as soon as you try to adjust ideas, you find
the supreme importance of making perfectly clear what
you are talking about. It is fatal to oscillate uncritically
from the things which endure to the things which occur,
and from the things which occur to the things which recur.
Discussions based on no metaphysical clarity in the dis¬
crimination of endurance, occurrence, recurrence, can be
made sophistically to prove anything.

For example, in the statement of the Utilitarian Principle
we find the phrase 4 The Greatest Happiness of The Greatest
Number’. Evidently this phrase has a meaning, at least
sufficient for us to take it as a rough guide to action. But
when we use the formula as a criticism of the other points
of view, we are entitled to ask what it means. The 'Happi¬
ness’ is evidently a recurrent, and it is differentiated into
grades of intensity, so that one occurrence may be more

THE HUMANITARIAN IDEAL 51

intense than another in point of Happiness. But what is
meant by the addition of the Happinesses of different occur¬
rences? There is no occurrence with the Happiness of this
addition sum. At least, if there be such an occurrence, it
ought to be indicated in the principle, and this indication
will lead us in the direction of the discarded Platonism.
Again, we must know the relation of the endurances to the
occurrences in order to understand the principle. As usually
employed, the phrase refers to the greatest number of men.
It therefore refers to endurances and not to occurrences.
But can we really correlate the happinesses of three short¬
lived men with that of one long-lived man? Then again
there are the qualitative differences between different types
of happiness. Finally we conclude that before we can profit¬
ably proceed with this discussion, it is necessary to attain some
clarity in our metaphysical notions respecting endurances,
occurrences, and things that recur.

Section VIII. We now pass to Science and ask whether
it provides us with any clear notions, independently of a
metaphysical discussion. Science is founded on the notion
of Law — The Laws of Nature. The notion is that there
are many things in the world, whose behaviour towards
each other always exemplifies fixed rules. These rules are
evidently indicating recurrences which never fail to recur.
Yet here a perplexity arises as to the connection of the Laws
with the behaving things. Behaviours differ widely in a city —
New York, for instance — in a forest, in a subtropical desert,
in an Arctic icefield. Also, to travel farther, they differ widely
on the Moon, on the atmosphere of the Sun, in the interior
of a dense star, in inter-stellar space.

This is very superficial. We all know that if we analyse
the things into molecules the laws «of chemistry are the same
in the city, the forest, the desert and the icefield. These

4-2

52

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

laws of chemistry express the mutual behaviour of mole¬
cules, packed with sufficient closeness. But molecules are
analysable. Things behave very differently amid a close
pack of molecules from their behaviour amid the vibrations
of so-called empty space. The chemical laws are merely
relevant to the inter-relations of molecules. In empty space
we are driven back to the fundamental electromagnetic
laws controlling the flux of energy. At this point we have
to stop our regression, merely because our penetration has
come to an end.

But there is no reason to doubt that the laws are the
outcome of the environment of electromagnetic occasions.
This whole process of regression suggests an inversion of
ideas. The laws are the outcome of the character of the
behaving things : they are the ‘ communal customs 5 of which
Clement spoke. This conception should replace the older
idea of given things with mutual behaviour conditioned
by imposed laws. What we know of external nature is
wholly in terms of how the various occasions in nature
contribute to each other’s natures. The whole environ¬
ment participates in the nature of each of its occasions.
Thus each occasion takes its initial form from the character
of its environment. Also the laws which condition each
environment merely express the general character of the
occasions composing that environment. This is the doc¬
trine of the definition of things in terms of their modes of
functioning.

But we are now drawing close to the impracticable ethics
of Christianity. The ideals cherished in the souls of men
enter into the character of their actions. These inter-actions
within society modify the social laws by modifying the
occasions to which those laws apply. Impracticable ideals
are a programme for reform. Such a programme is not to

THE HUMANITARIAN IDEAL 53

be criticized by immediate possibilities. Progress consists in
modifying the laws of nature so that the Republic on Earth
may conform to that Society to be discerned ideally by the
divination of Wisdom.

In these two chapters we have been considering the ad¬
ventures in the history of Europe of a great idea. Plato
conceived the notion of the ideal relations between men
based upon a conception of the intrinsic possibilities of human
character. We see this idea enter into human conscious¬
ness in every variety of specialization. It forms alliances
with allied notions generated by religion. It differentiates
its specializations according to the differentiations of the
diverse religions and diverse scepticisms associated with it.
At times it dies down. But it ever recurs. It is criticized,
and it is also a critic. Force is always against it. Its victory
is the victory of persuasion over force. The force is the sheer
fact of what the antecedent volume of the world in fact
contains. The idea is a prophecy which procures its own
fulfillment.

The power of an ideal consists in this. When we examine
the general world of occurrent fact, we find that its general
character, practically inescapable, is neutral in respect to the
realization of intrinsic value. The electromagnetic occasions
and the electromagnetic laws, the molecular occasions and
the molecular laws, are all alike neutral. They condition the
sort of values which are possible, but they do not determine
the specialities of value. When we examine the specializations
of societies which determine values with some particularity,
such specializations as societies of men, forests, deserts,
prairies, icefields, we find, within limits, plasticity. The story
of Plato’s idea is the story of its energizing within a local
plastic environment. It has a creative power, making possible
its own approach to realization.

CHAPTER IV

ASPECTS OF FREEDOM

Section I. The cultural history of Western Civilization
for the period illuminated by written records can be con¬
sidered from many aspects. It can be conceived under the
guise of a steady economic progression, diversified by
catastrophic collapses to lower levels. Such a point of view
emphasizes technology and economic organization. Alter¬
natively, history can be conceived as a series of oscillations
between worldliness and other-worldliness, or as a theatre
of contest between greed and virtue, or between truth and
error. Such points of view emphasize religion, morality, and
contemplative habits eliciting generalizations of thought.
Each mode of consideration is a sort of searchlight eluci¬
dating some of the facts, and retreating the remainder into
an omitted background. Of course in any history, even with
a restricted topic, limited to politics, or to art, or to science,
many points of view are in fact interwoven, each with varying
grades of generality.

One of the most general philosophic notions to be used
in the analysis of civilized activities is to consider the effect
on social life due to the variations of emphasis between
Individual Absoluteness and Individual Relativity. Here
‘absoluteness5 means the notion of release from essential
dependence on other members of the community in respect
to modes of activity, while ‘relativity5 means the converse
fact of essential relatedness. In one of their particulariza-

ASPECTS OF FREEDOM

55

tions these ideas appear in the antagonism between notions
of freedom and of social organization. In another they
appear in the relative importance to be ascribed to the
welfare of the state and to the welfare of its individual
members. The character of each epoch as to its social in¬
stitutions, its jurisprudence, its notions of ideal ends within
the range of practicability, depends largely upon those
various patches of activity within which one or other of these
notions, individual absoluteness or individual relativity, is
dominant for that epoch. No period is wholly controlled by
either one of these extremes, reigning through its whole
range of activities. Repression in one direction is balanced
by freedom in others. Military discipline is severe. In the
last resort individual soldiers are sacrificed to the army. But
in many fields of human activity soldiers are left completely
unfettered both by regulation and by custom. For members
of university faculties the repressions and the freedoms are
very different from those which obtain for soldiers.

Distribution of emphasis between absoluteness and rela¬
tivity is seemingly arbitrary. Of course there is always a
historical reason for the pattern. Frequently the shifting of
emphasis is to be ascribed to the general tendency to revolt
from the immediate past — to interchange black and white
wherever we find them. Also the transformation may be
a judgment upon dogmas held responsible for inherited
failures. It should be one function of history to disengage
such a judgment from the irritation due to transient cir¬
cumstances.

More often changes in the social pattern of intellectual
emphasis arise from a shift of power from one class or group
of classes, to another class, or group of classes. For example,
an oligarchic aristocratic government and a democratic
government may each tend to emphasize social organization,

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

56

that is to say, the relativity of individuals to the state. But
governments mainly satisfying the trading and professional
classes, whether nominally they be aristocratic, democratic,
or absolute, emphasize personal freedom, that is to say, in¬
dividual absoluteness. Governments of the latter kind have
been that of Imperial Rome with its middle class imperial
agents, and its middle class stoic lawyers, and in its happiest
period its middle class emperors; and that of England in
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

With the shift of dominant classes, points of view which
in one epoch are submerged, only to be detected by an
occasional ripple, later emerge into the foreground of action
and literary expression. Thus the various activities of each
age — governmental, literary, scientific, religious, purely
social — express the mentalities of various classes in the com¬
munity whose influence for those topics happens to be
dominant. In one of his speeches on the American Revolu¬
tion, Burke exclaims, “For heaven’s sake, satisfy somebody” .

Governments are best classified by considering who are
the ‘somebodies’ they are in fact endeavouring to satisfy.
Thus the English government of the first sixty years of the
eighteenth century was, as to its form and its persons,
aristocratic. But in policy it was endeavouring to satisfy the
great merchants of the City of London and of the City of
Bristol. Their dissatisfaction was the immediate source of
danger. Sir Robert Walpole and William Pitt, the Great
Commoner, personify the changing moods of this class, in
the earlier period sick of wars, and later imperialistic.

In a period when inherited modes of life are operating
with their traditional standard of efficiency, or inefficiency,
the class to be actively satisfied may be relatively restricted,
for example, the merchants of eighteenth-century England.
The majority will then be relatively quiescent, and con-

ASPECTS OF FREEDOM

57

servative statesmen, such as Walpole, will be anxious to do
nothing to stir the depths — i Quieta non movere\ Walpole was
an active reformer in respect to trade interests, otherwise a
conservative.

The corresponding statesmen in France were actively con¬
cerned with the interests of the Court whose power was based
on a bureaucracy (legal, administrative, and ecclesiastical)
and an army. As in contemporary England, the personnel
of the whole French organization, civil and military, was
aristocratic and middle class. French politics ran more
smoothly, but unfortunately for France its active political
element was more divorced from the main interests of the
country than the active element in England, though in each
country government exhibited its periods of insight and
folly. The French emphasis was towards co-ordination, the
English towards individual freedom. In the latter portion
of this century, in England the more active class politically
were the rural landowners. Note for instance the way
in which, at the end of his political life, Burke hugs the
improbable belief that he understood agriculture. Also the
municipality of the City of London was in the earlier period
an element of support for the government, and — until the
excesses of the French Revolution — in the later period an
element of opposition.

In the later period the oncoming industrial revolution
absorbed the energies of that English industrial class, whom
at the earlier period the slogan, ‘The Protestant Succession’
had stirred to political activity because for them it spelled
‘Industrial Freedom’. The mass of the people were now,
towards the end of the century, stirring uneasily, as yet
ignorant of the ways in which their interests were being
determined, and with its better members engaged in saving
their souls according to the directions of John Wesley.

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

58

Finally out of this welter, after a delay caused by the wars
of the French Revolution, the Victorian epoch emerged.
The solution was merely temporary, and so is the planet
itself.

Section II. In our endeavour to understand sociological
change we must not concentrate too exclusively on the effect
of abstract doctrine, verbally formulated and consciously
assented to. Such elaborate intellectual efforts play their part
in preserving, or transforming, or destroying. For example,
the history of Europe is not to be understood without some
reference to the Augustinian doctrines of original sin, of
divine grace, and of the consequent mission of the Catholic
Church. The history of the United States requires in ad¬
dition some knowledge of the English political doctrines of
the seventeenth century, and of French thought in the
eighteenth century. Men are driven by their thoughts as
well as by the molecules in their bodies, by intelligence and
by senseless forces. Social history, however, concentrates on
modes of human experience prevalent at different periods.
The physical conditions are merely the background which
partially controls the flux of modes and of moods. Even
here we must not over-intellectualize the various types of
human experience. Mankind is the animal at the head of
the Primates, and cannot escape habits of mind which cling
closely to habits of body.

Our consciousness does not initiate our modes of func¬
tionings. We awake to find ourselves engaged in process,
immersed in satisfactions and dissatisfactions, and actively
modifying, either by intensification, or by attenuation, or by
the introduction of novel purposes. This primary procedure
which is presupposed in consciousness I will term Instinct.
It is the mode of experience directly arising out of the urge
of inheritance, individual and environmental. Also, after

ASPECTS OF FREEDOM

59

instinct and intellectual ferment have done their work, there
is a decision which determines the mode of coalescence of
instinct with intelligence. I will term this factor Wisdom.
It is the function of wisdom to act as a modifying agency on
the intellectual ferment so as to produce a self-determined
issue from the given conditions. Thus for the purpose
of understanding social institutions, this crude three-fold
division of human nature is required : Instinct, Intelligence,
Wisdom.

But this division must not be made too sharply. After all,
intellectual activity is itself an inherited factor. We do not
initiate thought by an effort of self-consciousness. We find
ourselves thinking, just as we find ourselves breathing and
enjoying the sunset. There is a habit of day-dreaming, and
a habit of thoughtful elucidation. Thus the autonomy of
thought is strictly limited, often negligible, generally beyond
the threshold of consciousness. The ways of thought of a
nation are as much instinctive — that is to say, are subject
to routine — as are its ways of emotional reaction. But most
of us believe that there is a spontaneity of thought which
lies beyond routine. Otherwise, the moral claim for freedom
of thought is without meaning. This spontaneity of thought
is, in its turn, subject to control as to its maintenance and
efficiency. Such control is the judgment of the whole,
attenuating or strengthening the partial flashes of self-
determination. The whole determines what it wills to be, and
thereby adjusts the relative importance of its own inherent
flashes of spontaneity. This final determination is its Wisdom
or, in other words, its subjective aim as to its own nature,
with its limits set by inherited factors.

Wisdom is proportional to the width of the evidence made
effective in the final self-determination. The intellectual
operations consist in the co-ordination of notions derived

6o

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

from the primary facts of instinctive experience into a
logically coherent system. Those facts, whose qualitative
aspects are thus co-ordinated, gain importance in the final
self-determination. This intellectual co-ordination is more
readily achieved when the primary facts are selected so as
to dismiss the baffling aspects of things into intellectual sub¬
ordination. For this reason intellectual activity is apt to
flourish at the expense of Wisdom. To some extent, to under¬
stand is always to exclude a background of intellectual
incoherence. But Wisdom is persistent pursuit of the deeper
understanding, ever confronting intellectual system with
the importance of its omissions. These three elements, In¬
stinct, Intelligence, Wisdom, cannot be torn apart. They
integrate, react, and merge into hybrid factors. It is the case
of the whole emerging from its parts, and the parts emerging
within the whole. In judging social institutions, their rise,
their culmination, and their decay, we have to estimate the
types of instinct, of intelligence, and of wisdom which have
co-operated with natural forces to develop the story. The folly
of intelligent people, clear-headed and narrow- visioned, has
precipitated many catastrophes.

However far we go back in recorded history, we are
within the period of the high grade functioning of man¬
kind, far removed from mere animal savagery. Also, within
that period it would be difficult to demonstrate that man¬
kind has improved upon its inborn mental capacity. Yet
there can be no doubt that there has been an immense
expansion of the outfit which the environment provides
for the service of thought. This outfit can be summarized
under the headings, modes of communication, physical and
mental, writing, preservation of documents, variety of modes
of literature, critical thought, systematic thought? construc¬
tive thought, history, comparison of diverse languages,

ASPECTS OF FREEDOM

6l

mathematical symbolism, improved technology providing
physical ease. This list is obviously composed of many par¬
tially redundant and overlapping items. But it serves to
remind us of the various ways in which we have at our
service facilities for thought and suggestions for thought, far
beyond those at hand for our predecessors who lived any¬
where from two to five thousand years ago. Indeed, the last
two hundred years has added to this outfit in a way which
may create a new epoch unless mankind degenerates. Of
course, a large share of this outfit had already accumulated
between two and three thousand years ago. It is the brilliant
use which the leading men of that millennium made of their
opportunities which makes us doubt of any improvement in
the native intelligence of mankind.

But the total result is that we now discern a certain simple-
mindedness in the way our predecessors adjusted themselves
to inherited institutions. To a far greater extent the adjust¬
ment was a matter of course, in short, it was instinctive.
In the great period they discovered what we have inherited.
But there was a naivety about the discovery, a surprise.
Instinctive adaptation was so pervasive that it was unnoticed.
Probably the Egyptians did not know that they were governed
despotically, or that the priests limited the royal power,
because they had no alternative as a contrast either in fact
or in imagination. They were nearer in their thoughts to the
political philosophy prevalent in an anthill.

Another aspect of this fact is that in such societies, rela¬
tivity is stressed rather than individual freedom. Indeed, in
the earlier stages freedom is almost a meaningless notion.
Action and mood both spring from an instinct based upon
ancestral co-ordination. In such societies, whatever is not
the outcome of inherited relativity, imposing co-ordination
of action, is sheer destructive chaos. Alien groups are then

62

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

evil groups. An energetic prophet hewed Agag in pieces.
Unfortunately the spiritual descendants of Samuel still sur¬
vive, archaic nuisances.

Section III. We can watch some of the episodes in the
discovery of freedom. About fourteen hundred years before
Christ the Egyptian king Akhnaton evidently belonged to
an advanced group who thought for themselves and made
a step beyond the inherited religious notions. Such groups,
with flashes of free thought, must have arisen sporadically
many times before, during countless thousands of years,
some successful and most of them failures. Otherwise the
transition to civilization, as distinct from the mere diversity
of adaptations of thoughtless customs, could never have
arisen. Bees and ants have diverse social organizations; but,
so far as we know, neither species is in any sense civilized.
They may enjoy thoughtless adaptations of social customs.
Anyhow, their flashes of freedom are below the level that we
can discern. But Akhnaton, having exercised his freedom,
evidently had no conception of freedom as such. We have
all the evidence archaeology can provide that he rigidly
endeavoured to impose his notions upon the thoughts and
customs of the whole Egyptian nation. Apparently he
failed; for there was a reaction. But reactions never restore
with minute accuracy. Thus in all probability there re¬
mained a difference which the evidence before us is unable
to discriminate.

A more successful group were the Hebrew prophets about
eight or nine hundred years later. Spurred by the evils of
their times, they exercised a freedom in the expression of
moral intuition, and fitted out the character of Jehovah with
the results of their thoughts. Our civilization owes to them
more than we can express. They constitute one of the few
groups of men who decisively altered history in any intimate

ASPECTS OF FREEDOM 63

sense. Most spectacular upheavals merely replace one set
of individuals by another analogous set; so that history is
mostly a barren change of names. But the Hebrew prophets
really produced a decisive qualitative alteration, and what
is still more rare, a change for the better; yet the concep¬
tion of freedom never entered into the point of view of the
Jehovah of the prophets. Intolerance is the besetting sin of
moral fervour. The first important pronouncement in which
tolerance is associated with moral fervour is in the Parable
of the Tares and the Wheat, some centuries later.

Subsequent examples of intolerance supervening upon the
exercise of freedom are afforded by the Christian Church
after its establishment by Constantine, and by the Pro¬
testants under the guidance of Luther and Calvin. At the
period of the Reformation mankind had begun to know
better and so charity of judgment upon the Reformers
begins to wear thin. But then charity is a virtue allied to
tolerance, so we must be careful. All advanced thinkers,
sceptical or otherwise, are apt to be intolerant, in the past
and also now. On the whole, tolerance is more often found
in connection with a genial orthodoxy. The apostles of
modern tolerance — in so far as it exists — are Erasmus, the
Quakers, and John Locke. They should be commemorated
in every laboratory, in every church, and in every court of
law. We must however remember that many of the greatest
seventeenth-century statesmen and thinkers, including John
Locke, owed their lives to the wide tolerance of the Dutch
Republic.

Certainly these men were not the originators of their
admirable ideas. To find the origins we must go behind
them for two thousand years. So slow is translation of idea
into custom. We must however first note that the examples
cited have all been concerned with religion. There are

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

64

other forms of behaviour, active and contemplative. The
Athenians have given us the first surviving instance of the
explicit recognition of the importance of tolerance in respect
to varieties of social behaviour. No doubt antecedent civili¬
zations must have provided many practical examples of it.
For example, it is difficult to believe that in big metropolitan
cities such as Babylon and Nineveh there was much detailed
supervision of social behaviour. On the other hand, the
ways of life in Egypt seem to have been tightly organized.
But the first explicit defence of social tolerance, as a requisite
for high civilization, is found in the speech of Pericles as
reported by Thucydides. It puts forth the conception of the
organized society successfully preserving freedom of be¬
haviour for its individual members. Fifty years later, in the
same social group, Plato introduced deeper notions from
which all claims for freedom must spring. His general
concept of the psychic factors in the Universe stressed them
as the source of all spontaneity, and ultimately as the ground
of all life and motion. The human psychic activity thus con¬
tains the origins of precious harmonies within the transient
world. The end of human society is to elicit such psychic
energies. But spontaneity is of the essence of soul. Such in
outline is the argument from Platonic modes of thought to
the importance of social freedom.

Plato’s own writings constitute one prolonged apology
for freedom of contemplation, and for freedom for the com¬
munication of contemplative experiences. In the persistent
exercise of this right Socrates and Plato lived, and it was on
its behalf that Socrates died. There are exceptional passages,
but throughout the bulk of the Dialogues Socrates and Plato
are engaged in expressing manners of thought. Hardly
ever is there a passage which can be directly translated
into a particular action. The conclusions of the Republic

ASPECTS OF FREEDOM

65

will work only in heaven. The great exception is The Laws,
which is a minutely practical scheme for the establishment
of small city-states of the type then prevalent in the Aegean
area. The Thucydidean Pericles stresses the other side. He
is thinking of the activities of the individual citizens. The
peculiar civilization of the speech arises from its stress upon
the aesthetic end of all action. A Barbarian speaks in terms
of power. He dreams of the superman with the mailed
fist. He may plaster his lust with sentimental morality of
Carlyle’s type. But ultimately his final good is conceived as
one will imposing itself upon other wills. This is intellectual
barbarism. The Periclean ideal is action weaving itself into
a texture of persuasive beauty analogous to the delicate
splendour of nature.

The establishment of freedom requires more than its mere
intellectual defence. Plato above all men introduced into
the world this further essential element of civilization. For
he exhibited the tone of mind which alone can maintain
a free society, and he expressed the reasons justifying that
tone. His Dialogues are permeated with a sense of the
variousness of the Universe, not to be fathomed by our in¬
tellects, and in his Seventh Epistle he expressly disclaims the
possibility of an adequate philosophic system. The moral
of his writings is that all points of view, reasonably coherent
and in some sense with an application, have something to
contribute to our understanding of the universe, and also
involve omissions whereby they fail to include the totality
of evident fact. The duty of tolerance is our finite homage
to the abundance of inexhaustible novelty which is awaiting
the future, and to the complexity of accomplished fact which
exceeds our stretch of insight.

Thus two types of character must be excluded from those
effectually promoting freedom. One type belongs to those

5

wi

66

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

who despair of attaining any measure of truth, the Sceptics.
Such temperaments can obviously have no message for those
who hold that thought does count. Again the pursuit of
freedom with an intolerant mentality is self-defeating. For
all his equipment of imagination, learning, and literary mag¬
nificence in defence of freedom, the example of Milton’s life
probably does as much to retard the cause as to advance
it. He promotes a frame of mind of which the issue is
intolerance.

The ancient world of paganism was tolerant as to creeds.
Provided that your actions conformed, your speculations
were unnoticed. Indeed, one mark of progress beyond
purely instinctive social relations is an uneasy feeling as to
the destructive effect of speculative thought. Creeds are at
once the outcome of speculation and efforts to curb specu¬
lation. But they are always relevant to it. Antecedently to
speculation there can be no creeds. Wherever there is a creed,
there is a heretic round the corner or in his grave. Amid
the great empires, Egyptian, Mesopotamian, and Hittite,
and with the discovery of navigation, the intercourse
between races promoted shrewd comparisons gradually
broadening into speculative thought. In its beginnings this
shift in human mentality must have developed slowly.
Where there is no anticipation, change has to wait upon
chance, and peters out amid neglect. Fortunately the Bible
preserves for us fragments of the process as it affected one
gifted race at a nodal point. The record has been written up
by editors with the mentality of later times. Thus the task
of modern scholars is analogous to an endeavour to recover
the histories of Denmark and Scotland from a study of
Hamlet and Macbeth. We can see initial antagonisms
broadening into speculative attempts to rationalize the welter.
We can watch Samuel and Agag succeeded by Solomon

ASPECTS OF FREEDOM

67

and the Queen of Sheba. There are the meditations of Job
and his friends, the prophetical books, and the ‘wisdom5
books of the Bible. And with a leap of six hundred years
one version of the story ends with the creed of the Council
at Nicaea.

Section IV. The episode of Greek civilization during its
short phase of independence created a new situation. Specu¬
lation was explicitly recognized. It was ardently pursued.
Its various modes and methods were discovered. The re¬
lation of the Greeks to their predecessors is analogous, as to
stretch of time and intensity of effect, to that of the second
phase of the modern industrial revolution during the last
fifty years to the first phase which in truth sprawls over the
long centuries from the fifteenth century to the close of the
nineteenth.

By reason of its inheritance from the episode of Hellenic
culture the Roman Empire was more self-conscious than its
predecessors in its treatment of the problem of liberty and
of the allied problem of social institutions. So far as con¬
cerns Western Europe, the origin of the mediaeval civiliza¬
tion must be dated from the Emperor Augustus and the
Journeys of St Paul. For the Byzantine, Semitic, Egyptian
area, the date must be pushed back to the death of Alex¬
ander the Great, and the renaissance of Graeco-Egyptian
learning. For the first two centuries after Augustus the
former area, centred in Italy, was incomparably the more
important. Latin literature is the translation of Hellenic
culture into the mediaeval modes of thought, extending that
period to end with the French Revolution. Throughout
that whole period culture was backward looking. Lucretius,
Cicero, Virgil were mediaevals in their relation to Hellenic
literature and speculation; though they lacked the Semitic
factor. After that first Latin period, the notable contribu-

5-2

68

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

tions to thought, Pagan, Christian, and Mahometan, all de¬
rive from the eastern region, with the important exception
of Augustine. Finally, the centre of culture again swings
westward, as the Eastern civilization collapses under the
prolonged impacts of Tartars and Turks. The notes of these
three allied cultures, the Eastern, the Latin, and the later
European, are scholarly learning, recurrence to Hellenic
speculation re-stated in creedal forms, imitative literatures
stressing humane aspirations, the canalization of curiosity
into professional grooves, and — in the West — a new grade
of intelligence exhibited in the development of a variety of
social institutions. It is this last factor which has saved the
progress of mankind.

The new epoch in the formation of social institutions
unfolded itself very gradually. It is not yet understood in
its full importance. Social philosophy has not grasped the
relevant principles, so that even now each case is treated as
a peculiar fact. But the problem of liberty has been trans¬
formed by it. The novelty consists in the deliberate forma¬
tion of institutions, embodying purposes of special groups,
and unconcerned with the general purposes of any political
state, or of any embodiment of tribal unity playing the part
of a state. Of course any big empire involves a coalescence
of diverse tribes, customs, and modes of thought. But in the
earlier examples, each subject race had its own status in the
complex empire, and its ways of procedure were part of the
imperial system. Also there must have been complex modes
of behaviour, peculiar to the various races, inherited and
tolerated as a matter of course. In the case of the smaller
units such as the Greek city-states, we find a condition of
affairs in which all corporate action is an element in state
policy. The freedom was purely individual, never corporate.
All incorporation, religious or secular, was communal, or

ASPECTS OF FREEDOM 69

patriarchal. The saying, “Render unto Caesar the things
that are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s”
was uttered by Christ in the reign of Tiberius, and not by
Plato four hundred years earlier. However limited may be
the original intention of the saying, very quickly God was
conceived as a principle of organization in complete dis¬
junction from Caesar.

It is interesting to speculate on the analogies and differ¬
ences between the deaths of Socrates and of Paul. Both
were martyrs. Socrates died because his speculative opinions
were held to be subversive of the communal life. It is difficult
to believe that the agents of Claudius, or Nero, or Galba,
were much concerned with Paul’s speculative opinions as
to the ways of God to man. Later on, Lucian’s opinions
were as unorthodox as Paul’s. But he died in his bed.
Unfortunately for Paul, as he journeyed he left behind him
organized groups, indulging in activities unco-ordinated
with any purposes of state. Thus imperial agents were
alarmed, and sympathized with popular prejudice. Indeed,
we know exactly what one of the best of the Roman Em¬
perors about half a century later thought of the matter.
Trajan in his letter to the younger Pliny dismisses Christian
Theology as negligible. He is even unconcerned with their
organization into groups, so long as no overt action emerges
affronting the traditional association of the State with religion.
Yet he recognizes that the Christians will fit into no current
political philosophy, and that they represent corporate
actions on the verge of the intolerable. Thus if circumstances
unearth them, they are to be questioned, dismissed if
possible, but punished when their actions become glaring.
It is interesting to compare the Christians in the Roman
Empire, from Nero to Trajan, with the Communists in
modern America.

70

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

Trajan shows himself as a fine statesman dealing with the
faint dawn of a new epoch, not understood, and indeed
not yet understood. The old organization of mankind was
being affected by the influence of the new width of intel¬
lectuality due to Hellenism. Organizations mainly derived
from blind inheritance, and affected by the intellect only
in detail and in interpretation, are to receive the shock of
other types founded primarily on the intellectual apprecia¬
tion of private ends, that is to say, of ends unconcerned with
the State. What Henry Osborn Taylor has termed ‘rational
consideration 5 is becoming a major force in human organiza¬
tion. Of course, Plato and Aristotle exhibited rational con¬
sideration on a magnificent scale. But a group of thinkers
does not necessarily constitute a political force. Centuries,
sometimes thousands of years, have to elapse before thought
can capture action. It is typical of this gap, that Aristotle’s
manuscripts are said to have been stowed in a cellar for two
hundred years, and that even to this day Plato is mainly
valued as a religious mystic and a supreme literary artist. In
these latter functions, Plato represents the world he inherited
and not the world he created. Perhaps these constitute his
best part. But he played two roles.

The situation in the Roman Empire was, in effect, novel.
Pericles had conceived a freedom for private actions, of a
certain civilized type within narrowly restricted bounds.
Plato voices the claim for contemplative freedom. But the
Empire was faced with the claim for freedom of corporate
action. Modern political history, from that day to this, is
the confused story of the strenuous resistance of the State,
and of its partial concessions. The Empire reasserted the
old doctrine of the divine Emperor; but also yielded by
admitting as legal principle the Stoic doctrine of the Voice
of Nature. The Middle Ages compromised with the doc-

ASPECTS OF FREEDOM 71

trine of the two swords. In recent times, the State is
fighting behind its last ditch, which is the legal doctrine of
sovereignty. The thought of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries rationalized its political philosophy under the
fiction of the ‘Original Contract’. This concept proved itself
formidable. It helped to dismiss the Stuarts into romance,
to found the American Republic, and to bring about the
French Revolution. Indeed, it was one of the most timely
notions known to history. Its weakness is that it antedates
the era of the importance of rational consideration, and
over-estimates the political importance which at any time
reason has possessed. The antagonistic doctrine was that of
the ‘Divine Right of Kings’, which is the ghost of the
‘divine Emperor’.

Section V. Political philosophy can claim no exemption
from the doctrine of the golden mean. Unrestricted liberty
means complete absence of any compulsory co-ordination.
Human society in the absence of any compulsion is trusting
to the happy co-ordination of individual emotions, purposes,
affections, and actions. Civilization can only exist amid a
population which in the mass does exhibit this fortunate
mutual adaptation. Unfortunately a minority of adverse
individual instances, when unchecked, is sufficient to upset
the social structure. A few men in the whole cast of their
character, and most men in some of their actions, are anti¬
social in respect to the peculiar type of any society possible
in their time. There can be no evasion of the plain fact that
compulsion is necessary and that compulsion is the restriction
of liberty.

It follows that a doctrine as to the social mingling of
liberty and compulsion is required. A mere unqualified de¬
mand for liberty is the issue of shallow philosophy, equally
noxious with the antithetical cry for mere conformation to

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

72

standard pattern. Probably, there can be no one solution of
this problem adapted to all the circumstances of human
societies which have been and will be. We must confine
ourselves to the way in which at the present day the issue
is being adjusted in the western civilization, European and
American.

Roughly speaking, the main effectiveness of this solution
presupposes a wide distribution of institutions founded upon
professional qualifications and exacting such qualifications.
Obviously the canalization of a variety of occupations into
professions is a pre-requisite. Here the term Profession means
an avocation whose activities are subjected to theoretical
analysis, and are modified by theoretical conclusions derived
from that analysis. This analysis has regard to the purposes
of the avocation and to the adaptation of the activities
for the attainment of those purposes. Such criticism must
be founded upon some understanding of the natures of
the things involved in those activities, so that the results of
action can be foreseen. Thus foresight based upon theory,
and theory based upon understanding of the nature of
things, are essential to a profession. Again, the purposes of
a profession are not a simple bundle of definite ends. There
is a general purpose, such as the curing of sickness, which
defines medicine. But in a multitude of ways every human
body might be in a better state of biological fitness, and
might easily be worse. There has in every case to be a
selection of ends dependent partly on intrinsic importance if
attained, and partly upon practicability of attainment. It is
for this reason that the practice of a profession cannot be
disjoined from its theoretical understanding, and vice versa.
We do however find it necessary to specialize even further,
not only within some department of that profession, such as

ASPECTS OF FREEDOM 73

surgery, but also either to a major consideration of its theory
or to a major devotion to its current practice.

The antithesis to a profession is an avocation based upon
customary activities and modified by the trial and error of
individual practice. Such an avocation is a Craft, or at
a lower level of individual skill it is merely a customary
direction of muscular labour. The ancient civilizations were
dominated by crafts. Modern life ever to a greater extent
is grouping itself into professions. Thus ancient society was
a co-ordination of crafts for the instinctive purposes of com¬
munal life, whereas modern society is a co-ordination of
professions. Without question the distinction between crafts
and professions is not clear-cut. In all stages of civilization,
crafts are shot through and through with flashes of con¬
structive understanding, and professions are based upon
inherited procedures. Nor is it true that the type of men
involved are to be ranked higher in proportion to the
dominance of abstract mentality in their lives. On the con¬
trary, a due proportion of craftsmanship seems to breed the
finer types. The brilliant ability, in proportion to popula¬
tion, of Europe in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth
centuries suggests that at about that period the best harmony
had been reached. Pure mentality easily becomes trivial in
its grasp of fact.

The organization of professions by means of self-governing
institutions places the problem of liberty at a new angle.
For now it is the institution which claims liberty and also
exercises control. In ancient Egypt the Pharaoh decided,
acting through his agents. In the modern world a variety
of institutions have the power of action without immediate
reference to the State. This new form of liberty, which is
the autonomous institution limited to special purposes, was

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

74

especially exemplified in the guilds of the Middle Ages ; and
that period was characterized by a remarkable growth of
civilized genius. The meaning that — in England at least — was
then assigned to the word ‘liberty ’ illustrates the projection
of the new social structure upon the older form of customary
determination. For a ‘liberty’ did not then mean a general
freedom, but a special licence to a particular group to organize
itself within a special field of action. For this reason ‘ liberties 5
were sometimes a general nuisance.

Of course the Catholic Church was the great ‘liberty’ which
first confronted the Roman Empire, and then dominated
mediaeval life. In its early stages it is seen in its proper
theoretical relation to other autonomous societies. For ex¬
ample, in the pagan Empire its legal status seems to have
been analogous to that of the pagan burial societies ; although
the status of the Church property before the age of Con¬
stantine has not yet been finally elucidated by scholars.
But in the Middle Ages the Church so towered above other
institutions that it out-rivalled the State itself. Accordingly
its analogy to secular guilds and to other professional in¬
stitutions such as universities was obscured by its greatness.
The Catholic Church had another characteristic of priceless
value. It was, so far as concerned Europe, universal, that
is to say, Catholic. Until the approach of the Renaissance
there were no European nations in the modern sense. But
the Church transcended all governmental boundaries, all
racial divisions and all geographic divisions. It was a standing
challenge to any form of communal despotism, a universal
‘liberty’.

Section VI. From the beginning of the sixteenth cen¬
tury this first form of institutional civilization, with its
feudalism, its guilds, its universities, its Catholic Church,
was in full decay. The new middle classes, whether scholars

ASPECTS OF FREEDOM

75

or traders, would have none of it. They were individualists.
For them the universities were secondary, the monasteries
were a nuisance, the Church was a nuisance, feudalism was
a nuisance, the guilds were a nuisance. They wanted good
order, and to be let alone with their individual activities.
The great thinkers of the sixteenth and seventeenth cen¬
turies were singularly detached from universities. Erasmus
wanted printers, and Bacon, Hervey, Descartes, Galileo,
Leibniz wanted governmental patronage, or protection,
more than university colleagues, mostly reactionary. When
Luther, Descartes, Galileo, or Leibniz shifted his residence,
it was not to find a better university, but a more suitable
government — a Duke who would protect, a Prince who
would pay, or a Dutch Republic which would not ask
questions. Nevertheless, the universities survived the change
better than other institutions. In some ways it was a great
time for them, though they shrank to be national. What
finally emerged was the modern national organization of
Europe with the sovereign state dictating every form of
institutional organization, as subordinate elements for its own
purposes. This was a recurrence to that earlier form of human
organization which showed its faint signs of decay during
the period of the Roman Empire. Naturally there were great
differences. For nothing is ever restored. In fact the reaction
was a failure, because mankind had outgrown the simplicities
of the earlier form of civilization.

The political philosophy of the modern era was a retro¬
gression, based upon a recurrence to the philosophers and
lawyers of the old classical civilizations. The Middle Ages,
in the simplified form of the relations of Church with
State, were considering the problem of a civilization in
which men owed a divided allegiance to many intersecting
institutions pursuing diverse ends. This is the real problem

j6 ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

in a world dominated by fraternity derived from the catholic
diffusion of ideas, and from the international distribution
of property. The solution provided by the doctrine of the
sole sovereignty of the State, however grateful to protestants
and to sovereigns, is both shocking and unworkable, a
mere stick with which to beat Papists in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, a mere way to provide policemen
for the counting-houses of merchants. But, amid this re¬
actionary triumph of Periclean individualism in the political
philosophies of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,
there was an outcrop of institutions based upon the vigour
of modern intellectual interests. These institutions, even
when national, were concerned with interests impartial
among the nations. These were the centuries in which
science triumphed, and science is universal. Thus scientific
institutions, though in form national, informally established
a catholic league. Again the advance of scholarship, and
of natural science, transformed the professions. It intel-
lectualized them far beyond their stage of advance in earlier
times. Professions first appear as customary activities largely
modified by detached strains of theory. Theories are often
wrong; and some of the earlier professional doctrines erred
grievously and were maintained tenaciously. Doctrines
emerged as plausible deductions, and survived as the wisdom
of ancestors. Thus the older professional practice was rooted
upon custom, though it was turning towards the intellectual
sunlight. Here and there individuals stood out far in
advance of their colleagues. For example, in the fourteen
hundred years separating Galen from Vesalius, the standard
of European medical practice was not to be compared
with the attainments of either of these men. Also more
than a century after Vesalius, Charles the Second, of
England, on his deathbed was tortured by physicians em-

ASPECTS OF FREEDOM

77

ploying futile remedies customary at that time. Again, as
a designing engineer Leonardo da Vinci was unequalled
until the advent of Vauban and James Watt. In the earlier
centuries the professional influence, as a general sociological
fact, was mainly a welter of bygone flashes of intelligence
relapsing into customary procedures. It represented the con¬
tinual lapse of intellect into instinct. But the culmination
of science completely inverted the roles of custom and in¬
telligence in the older professions. By this inversion pro¬
fessional institutions have acquired an international life.
Each such institution practises within its own nation, but
its sources of life are world-wide. Thus loyalties stretch
beyond sovereign states.

Perhaps the most important function of these institutions
is the supervision of standards of individual professional
competence and of professional practice. For this purpose
there is a complex interweaving of universities and more
specialized institutions. The problem of freedom comes in
here. For it is not opinions which are censured, but learning
and ability. Thus in the more important fields of thought,
opinion is free and so are large divergences of practice.
The community is provided with objective information
as to the sort of weight to be attached to individuals and
as to the sort of freedom of action which may safely be
granted. Whatever is done can be subjected to the test of
general professional opinion, acting through this network
of institutions. Further, even large freedom can now be
allowed to non-professional individuals. For the great pro¬
fessional organizations, so long as they are efficient, should
be able to demonstrate the dangers of extravagant notions.
In this way, where sudden action is not in question, reason
has obtained an entrenchment which should be impreg¬
nable. Indeed, individual freedom, standing apart from

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

78

organization, has now its indispensable role. For all organi¬
zations are liable to decay, and licence for outside criticism
is the best safeguard for the professions.

Also the sovereign state of modern legal theory has its
sphere of action and its limitation. The State represents the
general wisdom of the community derived from an experience
broader than the topics of the various sciences. The role
of the State is a general judgment on the activity of the
various organizations. It can judge whether they welcome
ability, whether they stand high among the kindred institu¬
tions throughout the world. But where the State ceases to
exercise any legitimate authority is when it presumes to
decide upon questions within the purview of sciences or
professions.

For example, in the teaching profession it is obvious that
young students cannot be subjected to the vagaries of indi¬
vidual teachers. In this sense, the claim for the freedom of
teaching is nonsense. But the general community is very
incompetent to determine either the subject matter to be
taught or the permissible divergences to be allowed, or the
individual competence. There can be only one appeal, and
this is to general professional opinion as exhibited in the
practice of accredited institutions. The appeal is catholic.
The State of Tennessee did not err in upholding the prin¬
ciple that there are limits to the freedom of teaching in
schools and colleges. But it exhibited a gross ignorance of
its proper functions when it defied a professional opinion
which throughout the world is practically unanimous. Even
here that State is hardly to be blamed. For the current
political philosophy of sovereignty is very weak as to the
limitations of moral authority. Of course, whoever at any
moment has physical power has that power of physical
compulsion, whether he be a bandit, or a judge, or political

ASPECTS OF FREEDOM

79

ruler. But moral authority is limited by competence to
attain those ends whose immediate dominance is evident to
enlightened wisdom. Political loyalty ceases at the frontiers
of radical incapacity.

The functions of professional institutions have been con¬
sidered in some detail because they constitute a clear-cut
novelty within modern societies. There were faint antici¬
pations in the ancient world, for example the schools at
Athens, in particular those founded by Plato, Aristotle, and
the Stoics, and elsewhere the great foundation at Alexandria.
Also later the theologians of the Christian Church formed
another professional group which even stretched its claim
to authority beyond all bounds of good sense. It is by reason
of these anticipations, and of the legal developments of the
Roman and Byzantine schools of law, that the beginnings
of the modern world, in respect to the problem of freedom and
of moral authority, have been placed as early as Alexander
and Augustus.

Section VII. In the immediate present, economic or¬
ganization constitutes the most massive problem of human
relationships. It is passing into a new phase, and presents
confused outlines. Evidently something new is developing.
The individualistic liberalism of the nineteenth century has
collapsed, quite unexpectedly. So long as the trading middle
classes were dominant as the group to be satisfied, its doc¬
trines were self-evident. As soon as industrialism and edu¬
cation produced in large numbers the modern type of
artisan, its whole basis was widely challenged. Again, the
necessity for large capital, with the aid of legal ingenuity,
produced the commercial corporation with limited liability.
These fictitious persons are exempt from physiological death
and can only disappear by a voluntary dissolution or by
bankruptcy. The introduction into the arena of this new

8o

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

type of ‘person’ has considerably modified the effective
meaning of the characteristic liberal doctrine of contractual
freedom. It is one thing to claim such freedom as a natural
right for human persons, and quite another to claim it for
corporate persons. And again the notion of private property
had a simple obviousness at the foot of Mount Sinai and
even in the eighteenth century. When there were primitive
roads, negligible drains, private wells, no elaborate system
of credit, when payment meant the direct production of gold-
pieces, when each industry was reasonably se)f-contained —
in fact when the world was not as it is now — then it was
fairly obvious what was meant by private property, apart
from any current legal fictions. To-day private property is
mainly a legal fiction, and apart from such legal deter¬
mination its outlines are completely indefinite. Such legal
determination is probably, indeed almost certainly, the best
way of arranging society. But the ‘voice of nature’ is a faint
echo when we are dealing with it. There is a striking analogy
between the hazy notions of justice in Plato’s Republic and
the hazy notions of private property to-day. The modern
artisan, like Thrasymachus of old, is apt to define it as ‘ the
will of the stronger ’ .

Of course these extremes as to the nature of property —
simple-minded assertion and simple-minded denial — are
exaggeration. The whole concept of absolute individuals with
absolute rights, and with a contractual power of forming
fully defined external relations, has broken down. The
human being is inseparable from its environment in each
occasion of its existence. The environment which the
occasion inherits is immanent in it, and conversely it is
immanent in the environment which it helps to transmit.
The favourite doctrine of the shift from a customary basis
for society to a contractual basis, is founded on shallow

ASPECTS OF FREEDOM

8l

sociology. There is no escape from customary status. This
status is merely another name for the inheritance immanent
in each occasion. Inevitably customary status is there, an
inescapable condition. On the other hand, the inherited
status is never a full determination. There is always the
freedom for the determination of individual emphasis. In
terms of high-grade human society, there is always the cus¬
tomary fact as an essential element in the meaning of every
contractual obligation. There can be no contract which does
not presuppose custom, and no custom leaving no loophole
for spontaneous contract. It is this truth that gives vitality
to the Anglo-American Common Law. It is an instrument,
in the hands of skilled experts, for the interpretation of ex¬
plicit contract in terms of implicit status. No code of verbal
statement can ever exhaust the shifting background of pre¬
supposed fact. What does alter for dominant interests within
each social system is the relative importance of the contractual
and customary factors in general conscious experience. This
balance, fortunate or unfortunate, largely depends on the
type of social inheritance provided by that society. But
contract is a mode of expression for spontaneity. Otherwise
it is meaningless, a futile gesture of consciousness.

In the end nothing is effective except massively co¬
ordinated inheritance. Sporadic spontaneity is composed
of flashes mutually thwarting each other. Ideas have to
be sustained, disentangled, diffused, and co-ordinated with
the background. Finally they pass into exemplification in
action. The distinguishing mark of modern civilization is the
number of institutions whose origin can be traced to the
initial entertainment of some idea. In the ancient civiliza¬
tions thought was mainly explanatory. It was only creative
in respect to individual actions. But the corporate actions
preceded thought. The ancient gods, either as notions or as

6

wi

82

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

persons, did not create the thunderstorm, they explained it.
Jehovah did not create the Hebrew tribal emotions, he ex¬
plained them. He never made a covenant which initiated
Hebrew history; the notion of the covenant was an ex¬
planatory idea. It was influential; but the idea arose as an
explanation of the tribal history. Nevertheless it intensified a
pre-existing fact. The Old Testament is on the verge of the
dividing line between ancient and modern. This watershed
is Hellenism. The difference is only one of proportion, of
more or less. But a sufficient change of proportion makes all
the difference. In the last phase of ancient life there is a
haunting feeling that corporate actions ought to have ori¬
ginated from ideas. Thus their historical imagination un¬
consciously imported types of explanation of their past which
were faintly relevant to their own present: explanations
fantastic, incredible, fit only for exposure by scholars. It was
the shadow of the future thrown back on to the past.

Returning to the economic side of life, in the ancient
world there were economic transactions between tribes and
between states, and there were also the economic activities
of craftsmen, merchants, and bankers. There was com¬
munal activity and individual activity. Cicero’s financial
worries are preserved for us in his letters to Atticus. They
are very analogous to Gibbon’s letters to Holroyd, which are
characteristic of educated Europe in the eighteenth century.
Certainly Cicero’s affairs were sufficiently complex. It is not
in that respect that the ancient world fell short. It would
be worth sacrificing a good deal of Latin literature to know
what Atticus thought of Cicero’s financial position. Even
after two thousand years it is difficult not to entertain a
friendly anxiety on the subject. Perhaps as Cicero put his
head out of the litter he had been dreaming of bankruptcy,
when the sword of the soldier gave him death.

ASPECTS OF FREEDOM

83

That ancient world is modern both in the physical facts
which await us, and in the ripples of anxiety arising from its
social intricacies. At that time the human mind was singu¬
larly powerful for the generation of ideas. To the epoch
between Plato and Justinian we can trace our philosophical
ideas, our religious ideas, our legal ideas, and the model
of modern governmental organization. We can recognize
Pliny as he discusses whether the parents should serve on
the board of governors of the Grammar School he had
founded. Sidonius Apollinaris is an anticipation of many
New England gentlemen, ecclesiastic and lay. But within
that period the ferment of ideas had not persisted for a
sufficient time to transform society by a profusion of cor¬
porations originated by explicit thought. In particular the
great commercial corporations awaited modern times, the
Bank of St George at Genoa, the Bank of England, the
great trading companies to India and the East. Atticus was
a banker; but he was not the president of a banking cor¬
poration. Private wealth was deposited in pagan temples ; but
temples were corporations devoted to the customary rites of
religion. The state taxes were farmed by private corporations
of Roman capitalists. Here we approach modern notions.
Yet, after all, the pub licani were engaged in performing one
of the direct services of the State. Their actions were com¬
munal and traditional with a tinge of modern modes of
incorporation. No doubt many anticipations of modern com¬
mercial institutions can be found. Those times lie within the
modern world. But it was modern commerce in its infancy.
Indeed, the examples quoted of modern commercial activity
belong to an intermediate period, and only recently has the
influence of ideas produced its full economic effect. But
wherever ideas are effective, there is freedom.

Section VIII. Unfortunately the notion of freedom has

6-2

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

84

been eviscerated by the literary treatment devoted to it. Men
of letters, artists in symphonies of pictorial imagination, have
staged the shock of novel thought against tradition. The
concept of freedom has been narrowed to the picture of
contemplative people shocking their generation. When we
think of freedom, we are apt to confine ourselves to freedom
of thought, freedom of the press, freedom for religious
opinions. Then the limitations to freedom are conceived as
wholly arising from the antagonisms of our fellow men.
This is a thorough mistake. The massive habits of physical
nature, its iron laws, determine the scene for the sufferings
of men. Birth and death, heat, cold, hunger, separation,
disease, the general impracticability of purpose, all bring
their quota to imprison the souls of women and of men.
Our experiences do not keep step with our hopes. The
Platonic Eros, which is the soul stirring itself to life and
motion, is maimed. The essence of freedom is the practi¬
cability of purpose. Mankind has chiefly suffered from the
frustration of its prevalent purposes, even such as belong to
the very definition of its species. The literary exposition of
freedom deals mainly with the frills. The Greek myth was
more to the point. Prometheus did not bring to mankind
freedom of the press. He procured fire, which obediently to
human purpose cooks and gives warmth. In fact, freedom
of action is a primary human need. In modern thought, the
expression of this truth has taken the form of 4 the economic
interpretation of history’.

The fact that the ‘ economic interpretation ’ is itself a novel
thought arising within the last sixty or seventy years illus¬
trates an important sociological fact. The literary world
through all ages belonged mainly to the fortunate section of
mankind whose basic human wants have been amply satisfied.
A few literary men have been in want throughout their

ASPECTS OF FREEDOM 85

lives, many have occasionally suffered. The fact shocks us.
It is remembered because it is rare. The fortunate classes
are oblivious to the fact that throughout the ages the masses
of mankind have lived in conscious dread of such disaster —
a drought, a wet summer, a bad harvest, a cattle disease,
a raid of pirates. Also the basic needs when they are habitu¬
ally satisfied cease to dominate thought. Delicacies of taste
displace the interest in fullness of stomach. Thus the motives
which stir the fortunate directing classes to conscious
activity have a long-range forecast and an aesthetic tinge:
Power, glory, safety in the distant future, forms of govern¬
ment, luxury, religion, excitement, dislike of strange ways,
contemplative curiosity, play. Mankind survived by evolving
a peculiar excitability whereby it quickly adapts itself to
novel circumstance. This instability is quickly diverted to
some simple form of the more abstract interests of the
minority. The great convulsions happen when the economic
urge on the masses have dove-tailed with some simplified
ideal end. Intellect and instinct then combine, and some
ancient social -order passes away. But the masses of the
population are always there, requiring at least a minimum
of satisfaction, with their standard of life here higher and
there lower, also rising or falling. Thus, even when the
minority is dominant, the plain economic facts of life must
be the governing force in social development. Yet in general
the masses are intellectually quiescent, though the more
ideal ends of the minority, good and bad, permeate the
masses, directing policies according to the phantasies of the
generations. And the primary demand for freedom is to be
found in the general urge for the accomplishment of these
general ends, which are a fusion of ideal and economic
policies, making the stuff of history. In so far as a popu¬
lation is dominated by some general appetition, freedom

86

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

presents no peculiar problem to the statesman. The tribal
actions are shaped inevitably, and that group of mankind is
pushed towards accomplishment or frustration.

In modern states there is a complex problem. There are
many types of character. Freedom means that within each
type the requisite co-ordination should be possible without
the destruction of the general ends of the whole community.
Indeed, one general end is that these variously co-ordinated
groups should contribute to the complex pattern of com¬
munity life, each in virtue of its own peculiarity. In this
way individuality gains the effectiveness which issues from
co-ordination, and freedom obtains power necessary for its
perfection.

This is the hope of the statesman, the solution which the
long course of history is patiently disclosing. But it is not the
intuition which has nerved men to surpass the limitations
of mankind. After all, societies of primates, of animals, of
life on the earth’s surface, are transient details. There is a
freedom lying beyond circumstance, derived from the direct
intuition that life can be grounded upon its absorption in
what is changeless amid change. This is the freedom at which
Plato was groping, the freedom which Stoics and Christians
obtained as the gift of Hellenism. It is the freedom of that
virtue directly derived from the source of all harmony. For
it is conditioned only by its adequacy of understanding. And
understanding has this quality that, however it be led up
to, it issues in the soul freely conforming its nature to the
supremacy of insight. It is the reconciliation of freedom
with the compulsion of the truth. In this sense the captive
can be free, taking as his own the supreme insight, the
indwelling persuasion towards the harmony which is the
height of existence.

CHAPTER V

FROM FORCE TO PERSUASION

Section I. The gradual development of Persuasive
Agencies in the communal life of mankind was not wholly
due to the energizing of ideas. Indeed, the very habit of in¬
tellectual activity was promoted by the slow natural develop¬
ment of persuasive intercourse within the social life of each
community, and between different communities. Evidently
the existence of each family group involves a mixture of love,
dependence, sympathy, persuasion, and compulsion. There
can never have been any period when the gentler modes of
human relations were wholly absent. Indeed, the ferocity
may have been the later development, due to the increase of
intelligent self-interest. It may easily have arisen as a strain
of character necessary for preservation, and have developed
into an overgrowth checking upward evolution beyond a
low level of life. We find civilized communities struggling
with two kinds of compulsion. There are the natural neces¬
sities, such as food, warmth, and shelter. There are also
the necessities for a co-ordination of social activities. This
co-ordination is produced partly by instinctive habit, sus¬
tained by flashes of good sense, partly by the compulsion
exercised by other members of the community, and partly
by reasonable persuasion. In so far as the area of reasonable
persuasion widens, an environment has been provided
within which the higher mental activities and the subtler
feelings can find their use and their enjoyment. But with

88

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

the growth of intellect the range of necessity diminishes.
Some command over nature has been attained. Thus a wide¬
spread reliance on persuasion produces its reward in the shape
of an upward evolution. At least, it produces conditions
favourable to such an upward trend.

In this chapter we consider the effect of some of the
natural necessities, such as food and clothing, and also the
effect of activities, such as commerce, which naturally pro¬
mote the persuasive reactions within society, and between
societies. Also we consider the transition of these agencies
into various types of restlessness.

Such activities, energizing for centuries, indeed for thou¬
sands of years, lie behind the intellectual ferment which we
find driving onward the Hebrew prophets and the Greek
philosophers. Indeed, apart from the continuing vigour of
such agencies, the intellectual life of mankind would wither,
without roots, and without any material content for thought
or purpose.

Section II. The term Commerce, as used in this chapter,
will have an enlarged sense. It will include the interchange
of material commodities, and their manufacture for the
purpose of such interchange. It will also include the manage¬
ment of currency, which is a conventionalized commodity,
possibly but not necessarily possessing some intrinsic value
of its own apart from its use as currency. Finally we
shall extend the meaning of the term even beyond these
limits, passing beyond the bounds of material things. In its
most general sense, the commerce of mankind involves every
species of interchange which proceeds by way of mutual
persuasion.

All commercial values are psychological, that is to say, they
are measured by the desire widely spread among sections

FROM FORGE TO PERSUASION 89

of mankind to acquire the numerous articles in question.
Such desire may be closely connected with some physical
necessity arising out of possession or deprivation, for ex¬
ample, the satisfaction of hunger or starvation. When there
is a complete absence of any such physical necessity or
aesthetic fact, so that the sole advantages of possession depend
on the possibility of renewed exchange, we are essentially
concerned with currency founded on credit. In this field
of human behaviour the psychological peculiarities of man¬
kind produce their fullest effect. Very often, even in con¬
nection with currencies, there is no explicit contract, but
the advantage of possession consists in the belief as to the
stability of certain habits of mankind, habits which are not
founded on physical necessities for the preservation of life.
For example, gold currencies depend for their prestige upon
the habit of highly prizing the possession of gold. This
habit has a long and complex history. One comparatively
late element in this history is the well-established use of coined
gold pieces as a medium of exchange. Another element is
the unfounded belief that the value of gold is still mainly
independent of its use as currency, by reason of its aesthetic
and metallurgic uses. Another element is the well-founded
belief that so long as gold is generally used as currency,
no Government can arbitrarily increase its stock of gold
pieces. All of these characteristics of gold are alterable.
A chemical discovery in the remote future may render the
production of gold as easy as that of paper currency-notes.
The superstitious reverence for gold may pass away. The
governments of the world may prefer paper currencies, per¬
haps for the very reason that they can increase the number
of paper notes at their arbitrary will, thus freeing society
from one type of physical compulsion. But the fundamental

go

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

fact is that so long as the generality of mankind deem gold
to be wealth, then it is wealth; and as soon as this opinion
passes, gold then becomes a metal of subsidiary importance.

Currencies represent only one particular case of this de¬
pendence on habits of mankind. All producers and retail
traders are in this position. One extreme example is afforded
by the commerce in religious emblems, such as the production
of idols for worship in Central Africa, or the production
of black gowns for the vesture of Calvinistic or Unitarian
preachers in some countries. However, most commodities
belong to a mixed type. In temperate climates dress is a
physical necessity, but fashions of dress depend upon taste
and are in fact very alterable. Even food, though a more
pressing necessity than dress, in modern times includes an
abundance of alternatives. The upshot of all these con¬
siderations is that the doctrines of commerce have to be
founded upon assumptions concerning necessities, habits,
technology, and prevalent knowledge. But habits, tech¬
nology, and knowledge are variable from epoch to epoch,
and even in any one epoch differ in different sections of
humanity. Thus any theory of commerce depends upon
pre-suppositions as to the populations concerned, and cannot
be extended beyond these limits apart from a direct in¬
vestigation of the wider populations. For example, any
considerable change in technology alters in effect the popu¬
lations, and thus requires a corresponding shift in commercial
theory. This conclusion has been well known to the great
masters of economic doctrine. But certainly it has not been
adequately attended to by the majority of people engaged
in the theory or the practice of commerce or in its political
regulation. The classical political economy which dominated
the nineteenth century was largely based upon sociological
observation of the middle classes of Northern Europe and

FROM FORCE TO PERSUASION 91

Northern America in the eighteenth century, also with
some reference to Mediterranean commerce of earlier epochs.
Everything else, discernible in other sections of the Euro¬
pean populations or in other continents, was dismissed as
irrelevant interruption to the pure practice of perfect
commerce.

The development of economics was, in truth, affected
by the moralizing tendency of the class mainly concerned.
Their ideal of commercial activity as the main occupation of
perfected civilization led to the consideration of economic
laws which should hold, and to the neglect of economic pro¬
cedures which in fact did hold. For example, in England
in the mid-nineteenth century radical manufacturers opposed
the enactment of adulteration laws, basing their action on
the axiom Caveat emptor. In this instance their individual¬
istic doctrine of society, combined with their presupposition
that respectable men and women are mainly engaged in
safeguarding all details of their commercial interests, led
them to neglect questions of prevalent fact. In the study
of ideas, it is necessary to remember that insistence on
hard-headed clarity issues from sentimental feeling, as it
were a mist, cloaking the perplexities of fact. Insistence on
clarity at all costs is based on sheer superstition as to the
mode in which human intelligence functions. Our reasonings
grasp at straws for premises and float on gossamers for
deductions.

Section III. Another instance of ill-judged simplification
is the use made of the Malthusian Law of Population. This
law, in any reasonably accurate statement, is undeniable.
The increase of population apart from checks on impulse, or
on child-bearing, or on survival, proceeds by a law with
some analogy to geometric progression. Also, apart from
these checks, the numerical factor of the geometric increase

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ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

is greater than unity by a difference which is not negligible.
Again the means of subsistence — food, clothing, shelter — so
far as they are provided by appliances of given types, can
only be increased by the production of additional appliances
of these types. Such additional production, even if variable,
must conform to the general type of arithmetical progression.
But a geometric progression will always overtake an arith¬
metic progression. It was then concluded, as a consequence
of this Malthusian Law, that population will always overtake
the means of subsistence. The further inference was then
drawn that, apart from short exceptional periods, the normal
structure of society was that of a comparatively affluent
minority subsisting on the labours of a teeming population
checked by starvation and other discomforts.

These sociological conclusions, if true, are of enormous
importance to commerce, in the enlarged sense in which
we have used that term. For, in the first place, the normal
structure of society is now defined. It consists of the fortunate
few, and of the semi-destitute many. Thus producers must,
in the long run, design their production to suit these types
of customers. Again the hope of improving the social system
by a humane adjustment of social conditions in factories
must be abandoned. It is of course possible, here and there,
as the result of isolated charity. But in the long run, there
must be a pool of labour, starving and destitute, ready to
work on the wages of bare subsistence. Factories taking
advantage of such cheap labour will drive out of trade those
managed on fanciful humanitarian lines. Hence the final
improvement of the social system is mirage. In so far as
medicine saves life, there will be only more to starve.

These sociological conclusions from the Malthusian Law
assume first that all the restraints upon increase of mankind
are secondary in their effect until they are raised to domin-

FROM FORCE TO PERSUASION 93

ance by excessive population. Secondly they assume that
within the span of time required for the operation of the
Malthusian Law, sudden increases of productive power, due
to improved technology will not be introduced. Perhaps
such improved technology may even require additional
population. Thirdly they assume that the geographic situa¬
tion of the population concerned will not be seriously
affected by migration. In truth there is a complex situation
depending on the balance of many factors. By arbitrarily
seizing upon one or two factors, and by relegating the re¬
mainder to the status of secondary disturbances, almost any
law of population can be deduced. Thus the Malthusian Law,
with its sociological consequences, is not an iron necessity.
It is a possibility inherent in the facts, which may afford an
interpretation of the circumstances of some human societies,
perhaps of all.

A recourse to observation at once discloses the importance
of the doctrine of Malthus. China and India both afford
examples of societies which illustrate his law. They contain
large populations whose standard of life is perilously near
to the margin of subsistence. We must conclude, therefore,
that for nearly half the human race, Malthus has provided
an interpretation for some of the dominant facts of history
occurring within the last few centuries, and perhaps stretching
into a longer period. Now India and China are instances
of civilized societies which for a long period in their later
history maintained themselves with arrested technology and
with fixed geographical location. They provided the exact
conditions required for the importance of the Malthusian
Law.

When we turn to the European races the evidence is more
perplexing. The superficial fact is that during the eleven
centuries from the age of Charlemagne to the present day a

94

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

persistently increasing population has been accompanied by
an equally persistent rise in the general standard of life.
Thus any simple-minded Malthusian correlation of density
of population with deficiency in the necessaries of life does
not apply. Of course, the stock answer to this conclusion is
that the checks, which the leading Malthusians have always
explicitly recognized, have intervened to delay the inevitable
issue. But Europe, even Western Europe, is a large region,
and a thousand years is a long time, about one-sixth of the
whole past of civilization within the historical period. The
plain truth is that during this period and over that area the
so-called checks were such that the Malthusian Law repre¬
sented a possibility, unrealized and of no importance. Also
these checks were not even in proportion to the density of
the population. For examples, the plagues depended mainly
on insanitary habits, and the densities of rats, insects, and
microbes. At the time of the Black Death, a Malthusian
discussing the excessive birth rate would have been talking
irrelevant nonsense. Soap, water, and drains were the key to
the situation. The Thirty Years’ War halved the population
of Germany. It was due to many causes, a few creditable,
but most of them discreditable. An excessive population
in Germany has never been mentioned among them. Of
course there was plenty of misery in the Middle Ages, and
during the Renaissance. For example, we read of peasants’
risings. But this misery certainly did not prevail in any
proportion to density of population. Thus, in the early
years of the sixteenth century, Flanders which was thickly
populated was notably more prosperous than the country-
districts in Germany where, at that time, there was a rising
of the peasants. Of course the reasons for this contrast are
too obvious to be worth mentioning. But among these
reasons, the fact emerges that the Malthusian Law is largely

FROM FORCE TO PERSUASION 95

irrelevant for the discussion of sociological conditions in
Europe.

Section IV. Nevertheless, there have been such occasions
of relevance. It is a mistake to discuss the development of
Western Europe in isolation. The history of Europe has been
decisively influenced by its reactions with the Near East.
Here the term Near East is used to denote that large region,
including three metropolitan districts, on its coastal boun¬
daries — Constantinople, Mesopotamia, and the Delta of the
Nile, and also including the Arabian Desert with its fertile
fringes, and the plateaux and mountains of Asia Minor. The
history of civilization in the Old World is the history of
the internal development of the four continental regions
fringing Asia, namely, China, India, the Near East, and
Europe. These four histories cannot be understood apart
from a study of the reactions of these vast regions on each
other. For example, the Hellenic and Hellenistic epochs
comprise the story of how the ancient civilization of the
Near East brought to birth the new civilization of Europe,
and how European civilization asserted its independence of
the social system to which it owed its nurture. The subsequent
collapse of the older civilization is the tragedy of history,
foreshadowed by the decline of the Roman Empire whose
imperial system had reverted to Eastern ideals.

The reactions between mediaeval Europe and the Near
East can be classified under four headings, Malthus, Religion,
Technology, Commerce. It must be remembered, however,
that all the major crises in the story were precipitated
by a concurrence of many causes. It is a great mistake in
sociological theory to link impulse towards activity with
abject destitution. In fact, when a population has sunk its
standard of life to the marginal level for subsistence, the
poverty of life weakens the impulse towards adventure. The

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

96

Malthusian impulse towards conquest arises when a well-
nurtured, hardy population is only beginning to feel the
pressure of its numbers on its resources. There was no evidence
of starvation at the Courts of Central Asia or among the
Arabian tribes. Probably there was a growing hard dullness
of life provoking unrest. But the active stimulants for the
eruptions of the Tartar and Arabian tribes were adventure,
the dream of fabulous luxury, religion. The dream of luxury
is the first, and more dangerous, phase of the Malthusian
pressure on a population. It arises before the inroad of
enfeeblement. But the initial phase of emotional unrest can
take a more intellectual form, and clothe itself in religious
concepts. A new mass-religion can then arise, with the
mission to subdue the Earth and destroy the infidels. In
fact, it is a commonplace of history, that the pressure of
population upon its resources is one main ingredient in the
catastrophic reactions between large regions, and between
diverse classes within the same social system. On the whole,
catastrophes are disastrous to civilization. They are a plunge
into the unknown; and civilization is not the average result
of raw nature. It depends upon the long-time operation of
selective agency.

Three reasons stand out to explain why the internal con¬
ditions in Europe, for more than a thousand years, reduced
to insignificance the operation of the Malthusian Law. They
are, Expansion of Commerce, Development of Technology,
and Discovery of Empty Continents. All these causes are
interconnected. Also the activities involved in each can
be represented as due to a population seeking means of
subsistence. But the point is that mankind has developed
an unstable sensitivity in respect to its emotional and intel¬
lectual functions. Thus in fortunate societies faint signs of
economic pressure develop disproportionate forms of adven-

FROM FORGE TO PERSUASION

97

ture, physical and intellectual. Avocations are initiated as
means of subsistence: they end as passions. The result in
Europe has been the introduction of novelties, of Commerce,
of Scientific Technology, and of Geographic Knowledge,
which have entirely masked sociological consequences of the
Malthusian type.

The central activity from which the other two developed
was Commerce. We are speaking of Europe from the Age
of Charlemagne onwards. If we had included the six hun¬
dred years preceding that Age, the migration of Peoples
within Europe was one main factor. But in the period under
review these great migrations were over. The diffusion of
the Scandinavian Northmen was still in progress. But this
migration was hardly a mass movement. It is best conceived
as the diffusion of the ablest governing class that Europe
has ever seen — Canute and his Danes, Norman Barons in
France, and in England, and in Southern Italy. Also their
direct activities were not such as to mask the Malthusian
Laws. They introduced order, and good order is a con¬
dition for the increase of population. Order, as such, gives
no reason for escape from the consequences of an increasing
population. Also an enumeration of some main interests of
the epoch is not to the point. For example, the various
activities of the Catholic Church, the scholastic controversies,
the Holy Roman Empire, architecture, the artistic and
literary interests of the Renaissance, the Reformation, had
no direct bearing on the evasion of Malthusian consequences
arising from the increase of population. Granting the in¬
crease of population, History has only disclosed three ways
of escape — expanding Commerce, improving Technology,
and utilization of Empty Regions. The most fundamental
of all sociological classifications is that between civilized
societies for which one or more of these conditions do obtain,

7

wi

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

98

and those for which they do not obtain. In the wide sense
of the term, Commerce covers all three conditions. Thus
Commerce is one central factor, essential for a prosperous
civilization. As soon as there is an arrest, when expansion,
improvement, and novel utilization cease, then slowly and
imperceptibly a blight settles upon the populations con¬
cerned. China and India survived, with populations blighted
by hopeless poverty, the Roman Empire fell by reason of
the blight, the Near East is the store-house of buried cities
recording ancient magnificence. The central factor is Com¬
merce; and more than that, it is Commerce developed
adventurously.

In the first three hundred years of the slow development
of the Feudal System after Charlemagne, wre see a popula¬
tion barely gaining a livelihood by hard toil. This state of
things exemplifies the application of Malthus’ Doctrine in
the primitive stages of civilization. The only way of coping
with an increase of population was to cut down another
forest, and arithmetically to add field to field, till fertile land
was fully occupied. Also fertility itself became exhausted,
so that until the close of the eighteenth century fallow fields
bore witness to the iron limits that nature set to agriculture.
The essence of technology is to enable mankind to transcend
such limitations of unguided nature. For example, the ro¬
tation of the crops, the scientific understanding of fertilizers
and of genetics, have already altered the bounds set to food
production.

In those early times the Malthusian Laws set their limits
to life. The ‘checks’ were operating, and population hardly
increased. The slow growth of Commerce, the foundation
of centres of trade with the peculiar privileges of the bur¬
gesses and the guilds, the strange knowledge of the Jews,
pilgrims, the glimpses of the Near East provided by Medi-

FROM FORGE TO PERSUASION 99

terranean trade, and later by the Crusades, the intelligence
housed in the great monasteries — all these factors gradually
removed the repression of raw nature upon the possibilities
of human existence. European life began to approach the
standards of the Near East and of China so far as concerned
technology and general commercial activities. But these
older civilizations were about to face new limitations, equally
inexorable, granting their stage of technology and of social
organization.

Section V. Nature is plastic, although to every prevalent
state of mind there corresponds iron nature setting its bounds
to life. Modern history begins when Europeans passed into
a new phase of understanding which enabled them to
introduce new selective agencies, unguessed by the older
civilizations. It is a false dichotomy to think of Nature and
Man. Mankind is that factor in Nature which exhibits in
its most intense form the plasticity of nature. Plasticity is the
introduction of novel law. The doctrine of the Uniformity of
Nature is to be ranked with the contrasted doctrine of magic
and miracle, as an expression of partial truth, unguarded and
unco-ordinated with the immensities of the Universe. Our
interpretations of experience determine the limits of what we
can do with the world.

For the purpose of understanding how it happened that
European life escaped the restrictions which finally bound
China, India, and the Near East, it is important to re¬
capture the attitude towards Commerce prevalent in various
epochs. I do not mean records of trade, but records of the
kinds of mentality governing commercial relations. We can
only understand a society by knowing what sort of people
undertook what sort of functions in that society. It must be
remembered that China and Bagdad, at the height of their
prosperity, exhibited forms of human life in many ways

7-2

100

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

more gracious than our own. They were great civilizations.
But they became arrested, and the arrest is the point of our
enquiry. We have to understand the reasons for the greatness
and the final barriers to advancement. Of course, such an
ambitious design is absurd. It would mean the solution of
the main problem of sociology. What can be done, is to note
some indications of relevant tones of mind apparently widely
spread in various districts at different epochs.

There is ample evidence of active Commerce in China and
the Near East in ancient times, contemporary with the pre-
Hellenic and Hellenic periods of the Aegean Basin. There
are Codes of Law which determine commercial problems.
Also among the early inscriptions recovered from Babylon
and Nineveh there are a mass of records of private trans¬
actions between merchants. Three thousand years ago the
importance of credit would have been no news either in
Mesopotamia or in China. Also there was foreign trade
beyond the boundaries of the Near East. There are evidences
of ocean-borne trade between India and Egypt, perhaps even
between China and Egypt, with Ceylon as an intermediary.
Also Central Asia was nearing its last phase of prosperity
before it faded out into desert. It seems to have provided the
route for a flourishing overland trade between China and
the Near East. Thus these great civilizations were supported
by internal trade and by external trade with each other. Also
there was the whole coast-line of semi-barbarous Europe —
the shores of the Black Sea, the shores of the Western
Mediterranean, the Atlantic coasts of Europe.

Having regard to relative backwardness of the art of
navigation then, compared with the same art in the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries after Christ, the boldness of the
Phoenician sailors and the enterprise of their traders at least
equals that in any of the later feats. It is impossible to be more

FROM FORCE TO PERSUASION

IOI

than absolutely fearless : and considering the dim geographic
knowledge possessed by the ancients, the Phoenicians must
be allowed the fame of having displayed that extremity of
courage. The Greeks were bold sailors, but the Phoenicians
led the way. There is no reason to believe that in later
times a Greek or a Roman vessel ever saw a coast-line not
previously visited by Phoenician traders. Also, remembering
Hanno’s voyage in the sixth century before Christ, the whole
oceanic coast-line of Africa was explored by the men of the
Near East, where western Europeans did not venture till the
lapse of nigh two thousand years. In the last few hundred
years, European races have been apt to forget the greatness
of the Near East, whose populations, with no predecessors to
guide them, carried mankind from the stage of semi-barbarism *
only half-erect from the soil, to peaks of civilized life, in
art, in religion, and in adventure, which remain unsurpassed.
Their civilization in its prime was founded on Expanding
Commerce, Development of Technology, and Discovery of
Empty Continents. But in this list one item has been omitted,
The Souls of Men.

The vigour of the Near East survived the first effort to
establish a widespread European civilization. This Euro¬
pean attempt was embodied in the Western portion of the
Roman Empire. It was sustained during four hundred and
fifty, or five hundred years. The limits of this period may
be approximately assigned from Caesar and Augustus at the
commencement down to the taking of Rome by Alaric in
the year 410 a.d. The failure did not consist in the decline
and fall of its political institutions. Such state-systems are
transient expedients upon the surface of civilization. The
real failure consists in the fact that in the year 600 a.d.,
Western Europe was less civilized than in the year 100 a.d.,
and was far behind the Eastern Mediterranean during the

102

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

third and fourth centuries before Christ. Pope Gregory, the
Great, would have been poor company for Sophocles, Aris¬
totle, Eratosthenes, or Archimedes. Gregory was the man
for his time. But the delicacies of civilization — in art, or in
thought, or in human behaviour — were then at a discount.

In every sense of the term, the Western Empire had
lacked expansive force. Across the Rhine and the Danube
the northern forests were impenetrable. On the west, the
Atlantic Ocean was trackless. With the minor excepdon of
the conquest of Britain, all attempt at physical expansion
ceased after Varus lost the legions of Augustus. The Western
Empire in all its ramifications was a purely defensive in¬
stitution, in its sociological functionings and in its external
behaviour. Its learning lacked speculative adventure. In no
sense, however we stretch the metaphor, did it discover a
New World. Unfortunately life is an offensive, directed
against the repetidous mechanism of the Universe. It is the
thesis of this discussion that a policy of sociological defence
is doomed to failure. We are analysing those types of social
functioning which provide that expansion and novelty which
life demands. Life can only be understood as an aim at that
perfection which the conditions of its environment allow.
But the aim is always beyond the attained fact. The goal is
some type of perfected things, however lowly and basically
sensual. Inorganic nature is characterized by its acceptance
of matter of fact. In nature, the soil rests, while the root of the
plant pursues the sources of its refreshment. In the Western
Empire there was no pursuit. Its remnants of irritability were
devoid of transcendent aim.

Of course Christianity was a tremendous exception. But
on the whole, in its immediate effect it was a destructive
agency. Its disregard of temporal fact, based on apocalyptic
prophecy, was too extreme. It was not till its first few cen-

FROM FORGE TO PERSUASION IO3

turies were passed that it began to acquire a fortunate world¬
liness. Indeed the translation of Eastern modes of thought —
Semitic, Greek, and Egyptian — to Western Europe had
the unfortunate effect of making the ideal side of civiliza¬
tion appear more abstract than it was in the lands and the
epochs of its origin. It had this effect in the Near East
itself when by the lapse of time circumstances altered. For
the early Hebrews, their God was a personage whose aims
were expressible in terms of the immediate political and
social circumstances. Their religious notions had singularly
slight reference to another World. The absorption of the
Greek philosophers in the city life of their times is evident.
But in other times and, still more, in other lands, such
thoughts and ideals took on an abstract tinge. They had
lost their practical application. The notion arose that the
man of culture and the man of ideal aim was a stranger
in the busy world. It is true that such a notion haunted
Plato. But it dominated Augustine. Yet in Augustine’s
age, towards the close of the century after Constantine, the
mission of the Church for the reformation of this World
was in its first phase. The obstinate survival of the present
World was upsetting the unworldly tactics of the early
Christians.

But the civilization of the Near East, including its By¬
zantine fringe, contained other sources of vigour, preserving
it from the decadence of its Western off-shoot. The true
successors of Alexander, the men who realized his fabled
dream of extending the Near Eastern civilization from the
Tigris to the western shores of the Mediterranean, belonged
to the age of Justinian and to the age of Mahometan ex¬
pansion. Justinian’s success was incomplete. It was a
false dawn. But the Mahometans represent the complete
triumph of the Near East, after it had absorbed the novel

104 ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

ingredients introduced by Hellenism and Hebrewism, its
two great off-shoots destined to re-create civilization. Thus
there are two peaks to the Near Eastern Culture. The
earlier is embodied in the first known examples of high
civilization in Babylon and Egypt. The metaphor of a peak
here fails; for this earlier type of life maintained itself for
long ages. The advent of the Persians represents a transitional
period. They almost antedated the Mahometans. But the
times were not ready.

The distinction separating the Byzantines and the Maho¬
metans from the Romans is that the Romans were them¬
selves deriving the civilization which they spread. In their
hands it assumed a frozen form. Thought halted, and litera¬
ture copied. The Byzantines and the Mahometans were
themselves the civilization. Thus their culture retained its
intrinsic energies, sustained by physical and spiritual ad¬
venture. They traded with the Far East: they expanded
westward: they codified law: they developed new forms of
art: they elaborated theologies: they transformed mathe¬
matics: they developed medicine. In this final period of
Near Eastern greatness the Jews played the same part as
did the Greeks during the Persian epoch. Finally, the Near
East as a centre of civilization was destroyed by the Tartars
and the Turks.

Luckily for Europe, the more northern thrust of the
Tartars across Russia seems to have been checked by
the forests of Poland and the more southern hills and
mountains. These conquerors of the Near East were never
civilized in any effective sense of the term. During the
later centuries, the Turkish pressure on Europe consti¬
tuted merely the threat of Europe produced by a lower
civilization, an ingenious compound of primitive brutality
and decadent refinement. In the eighteenth and nineteenth

FROM FORCE TO PERSUASION IO5

centuries much history was written under the impression
that the Turks were the authentic representatives of the
previous Near Eastern civilization. Thus the early Greeks
were staged as its opponents and not as its derivatives. In
fact the long pupillage of Europe to the Near East was
entirely misrepresented.

Section VI. At the close of the Dark Ages Europe started
upon its second effort after civilization with three main ad¬
vantages : its Christian ethics : its instinct for legal organiza¬
tion transcending local boundaries, derived from the Church
and the reminiscence of the Empire: and thirdly its wider
inheritance of antecedent thought, gradually disclosing itself
as Hebrew, Greek, and Roman literatures. The total effect
was the increased sense of the dignity of man, as man.
There has been a growth, slow and wavering, of respect for
the preciousness of human life. This is the humanitarian
spirit, gradually emerging in the slow sunrise of a thousand
years.

The creation of the world — said Plato — is the victory of
persuasion over force. The worth of men consists in their
liability to persuasion. They can persuade and can be per¬
suaded by the disclosure of alternatives, the better and the
worse. Civilization is the maintenance of social order, by
its own inherent persuasiveness as embodying the nobler
alternative. The recourse to force, however, unavoidable, is
a disclosure of the failure of civilization, either in the general
society or in a remnant of individuals. Thus in a live civiliza¬
tion there is always an element of unrest. For sensitiveness
to ideas means curiosity, adventure, change. Civilized order
survives on its merits, and is transformed by its power of
recognizing its imperfections.

Now the intercourse between individuals and between
social groups takes one of two forms, force or persuasion.

106 ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

Commerce is the great example of intercourse in the way
of persuasion. War, slavery, and governmental compulsion
exemplify the reign of force. The weakness of the Near
Eastern civilizations consisted in their large reliance upon
force. The growth of persuasive inter course within the texture
of society became halted. These civilizations never eradicated
a large reliance upon the sway of conquerors over conquered
populations, and upon the rule of individual masters over «
slaves. This habit of dominance spread its infection beyond
these limits. A rule of men over women remained an
established feature of highly civilized societies. It survived
as a hang-over from barbarism. But its demoralizing effects
increased with civilization. This inequality of men and
women seems to have been based upon physical superiorities,
and the absorption of women in the birth and care of
children. Anyhow it issued in the degradation of women
below the level of the males. Thus these eastern races entered
upon the fatal experiment of maintaining themselves at two
levels of culture, and of dominating subject populations at
yet a third level. The enjoyment of power is fatal to the
subtleties of life. Ruling classes degenerate by reason of their
lazy indulgence in obvious gratifications.

Commerce followed upon the gradual acquirement of
means for easy locomotion in small groups. Whole com¬
munities had wandered, gradually shifting to other en¬
vironments. But travel and return, undertaken by small
groups or even by individual men, is an enterprise of entirely
different character. It requires either open country, free
from forest barriers, or the navigation of rivers and seas. The
strangers arrive in small groups. They are thus under no
temptation to dominate, and excite no fear. Commerce may
stabilize itself into a steady traditional routine. This halt
in progress has happened over large areas for« long periods

FROM FORCE TO PERSUASION IO7

of time. But on the whole, Commerce is unstable. It brings
together groups of men with different modes of life, different
technologies, and different ways of thought. Apart from
Commerce, the mariners’ compass, with the vast theory
which it has suggested, would never have reached the shores
of the Atlantic, and printing would not have spread from
Pekin to Cairo.

The expanding Commerce of mediaeval and modern
Europe was promoted in the first place by the great roads
which were the legacy from the Roman Empire, by the
improving art of navigation which enabled the indented
coast-line to be utilized, and by the sense of unity promoted
by the Catholic Church and Christian ethics. There were
pirates, and feudal wars, and rough sporadic disorder. But
men from different regions, of different races, and of different
occupation were meeting together on the basis of free per¬
suasion. Even the feudal castle, though it often harboured
men with the mentality of gangsters, was more apt for de¬
fence than for offence. Also feudal levies, with their short
periods of service, were mostly effective as defensive forces.
In later times the evils of this system outweighed its merits.
But in its origin it can be compared to the modern police,
quite as aptly as to the modern army. Of course it differed
from both. The point is that the feudal castle was mostly a
sensible mode of self-protection for a peaceful district. The
merit of Commerce lies in its close relation to technology.
The novelty of experience promoted by Commerce suggests
alternatives in ways of production. Again European tech¬
nology was fertilized from another source. The art of clear
thinking, of criticism of premises, of speculative assumption,
of deductive reasoning — this great art was discovered, at
least in embryo, by the Greeks, and was inherited by Europe.
Like other inventions it has often been disastrously misused.

io8

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

But its effect on intellectual capacity can only be compared
with that of fire and iron and steel for the production of the
blades of Damascus and Toledo. Mankind was now armed
intellectually, as well as physically.

Curiosity was now progressive. The static wisdom of the
proverbs of Solomon, and of the Wisdom Books of the Bible,
has been supplanted by Euclid’s Elements, by Newton’s
Physics, by the modern epoch in industry. 4 All the rivers
run into the sea; there is nothing new under the sun’, was
the final judgment of the Near East. When we have allowed
for all its brilliance, and for its many modes of activity, this
great civilization finally sank under the barren criticism of
disillusioned sensualists. It is the nemesis of the reign of
force, of the worship of power, that the ideals of the semi¬
divine rulers centre upon some variant of Solomon’s mag¬
nificent harem of three hundred wives and seven hundred
concubines. The variation may be towards decency, but it
is equally decadent. Christianity has only escaped from the
Near East with scars upon it.

Section VII. In this rapid survey of the rise and fall of
civilizations, we have noted four factors which decisively
govern the fate of social groups. First, there stands the
inexorable law that apart from some transcendent aim the
civilized life either wallows in pleasure or relapses slowly
into a barren repetition with waning intensities of feeling.
Secondly, there stands the iron compulsion of nature that
the bodily necessities of food, clothing, and shelter be pro¬
vided. The rigid limits which are thereby set to modes of
social existence can only be mitigated by the growth of an
understanding by which the interplay between man and the
rest of nature can be adjusted. Thirdly, the compulsory
dominion of men over men has a double significance. It
has a benign effect so far as it secures the co-ordination of

FROM FORGE TO PERSUASION IO9

behaviour necessary for social welfare. But it is fatal to ex¬
tend this dominion beyond the barest limits necessary for
this co-ordination. The progressive societies are those which
most decisively have trusted themselves to the fourth factor
which is the way of persuasion. Amidst all the activities of
mankind there are three which chiefly have promoted this
last factor in human life. They are family affections aroused
in sex relations and in the nurture of children, intellectual
curiosity leading to enjoyment in the interchange of ideas,
and — as soon as large-scale societies arose — the practice of
Commerce. But beyond these special activities a greater
bond of sympathy has arisen. This bond is the growth of
reverence for that power in virtue of which nature harbours
ideal ends, and produces individual beings capable of con¬
scious discrimination of such ends. This reverence is the
foundation of the respect for man as man. It thereby secures
that liberty of thought and action, required for the upward
adventure of life on this Earth.

CHAPTER VI

FORESIGHT

Section I. By the phrase Historical Foresight, I mean
something quite different from the accurate exercise of
Scientific Induction. Science is concerned with generalities.
The generalities apply, but they do not determine the course
of history apart from some anchorage in fact. There might
have been many alternative courses of history conditioned by
the same laws. Perhaps, if we knewr enough of the laws,
then we should understand that the development of the
future from the past is completely determined by the details
of the past and by these scientific laws which condition all
generation. Unfortunately our knowledge of scientific laws
is woefully defective, and our knowledge of the relevant
facts of the present and the past is scanty in the extreme.
Thus as the result of all our science, we are ignorant of that
remote epoch when there will be a second collision between
the sun and a passing star, we are ignorant of the future of
life on the earth, we are ignorant of the future of mankind,
we are ignorant of the course of history a year hence, we
are ignorant of most of the domestic details of our lives to¬
morrow, we are even ignorant of the term that has been set
to our own existence.

This catalogue of ignorances at once reminds us that our
state is not that of blank absence of knowledge. Our ignor¬
ance is suffused with Foresight. Also the basis of our defect
in foresight is our scant knowledge of the relevant detailed

FORESIGHT

I I I

facts in past and present which are required for the appli¬
cation of the scientific laws. Where the circumstances are
comparatively simple, as in Astronomy, we know that the
facts and the astronomical laws provide an apparatus of
great accuracy in forecast. The main difficulty in Historical
Foresight is the power of collecting and selecting the facts
relevant to the particular type of forecast which we wish
to make. Discussions on the method of science wander off
on to the topic of experiment. But experiment is nothing else
than a mode of cooking the facts for the sake of exemplifying
the law. Unfortunately the facts of history, even those of
private individual history, are on too large a scale. They
surge forward beyond control.

It is thus evident that this topic of Historical Foresight
is not to be exhausted by a neat description of some definite
methods. It is faced with two sources of difficulty, where
science has only one. Science seeks the laws only, but Fore¬
sight requires in addition due emphasis on the relevant facts
from which the future is to emerge. Of the two tasks re¬
quired for Foresight, this selection amid the welter is the
more difficult. Probably a neat doctrine of Foresight is
impossible. But what can be done is to confine attention
to one field of human activity, and to describe the type
of mentality which seems requisite for the attainment of
Foresight within that field. The present state of the world,
and the course of the discussions in this book, suggest the
field of Commercial relations. This field will therefore be
chosen to illustrate the function of ideas in the provision of
anticipation and purpose.

To avoid misunderstanding I must disclaim the foolish
notion that it is possible for anyone, devoid of personal
experience of commerce, to provide useful suggestions for
its detailed conduct. There is no substitute for first-hand

1 12

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

practice. Adso the word ‘commerce’ is here used in the
largest sense of that term, in which it includes a variety of
activities. Any useful theory, capable of immediate applica¬
tion to specific instances, must depend on a direct knowledge
of the relevant reactions of men and women composing that
society, or perhaps group of nations, within which the specific
business in question is to flourish. In this discussion there is
no pretence of such detailed knowledge.

There remains, however, the question of the general type
of mentality which in the present condition of the world will
promote the general success of a commercial community.
Such a type is, of course, very complex. But we are con¬
sidering one unquestioned element in it, namely Foresight,
and will discuss the conditions for its development and its
successful exercise.

Some people are born with astounding knacks of the
mind. For example, there are calculating boys who can
perform intricate operations of mental arithmetic in a flash,
there are also other sorts of peculiar faculties of divination;
in particular there are men with a knack of shrewdness in
judging circumstances within the narrow range of their
immediate observation. But after all, bankers prefer that
their clerks should learn arithmetic, and trained geologists
are preferred to men with divining rods. In the same way,
there are general conditions of training which promote the
development of a wider type of foresight.

It is a great mistake to divide people into sharp classes,
namely, people with such-and-such a knack and people
without it. These trenchant divisions are simply foolish.
Most humans are born with certain aptitudes. But these
aptitudes can easily remain latent unless they are elicited into
activity by fortunate circumstances. If anyone has no apti¬
tude of a certain type, no training can elicit it. But, granted

FORESIGHT

1 13

the aptitude, we can discuss the ways of training it. Fore¬
sight depends upon understanding. In practical affairs it is
a habit. But the habit of foreseeing is elicited by the habit
of understanding. To a large extent, understanding can be
acquired by a conscious effort and it can be taught. Thus the
training of Foresight is by the medium of Understanding.
Foresight is the product of Insight.

Section II. The general topic to be understood is the
entire internal functioning of human society, including its
technologies, the biological and physical laws on which
these technologies depend, and including the sociological
reactions of humans depending on fundamental psycho¬
logical principles. In fact, the general topic is sociology in
the broadest sense of the term, including its auxiliary sciences.
Such a width of understanding is, of course, beyond the
grasp of any single human. But no part of it is entirely
foreign to the provision of foresight in business. Such a
complete understanding is a co-operative enterprise; and a
business community maintains its success for long periods so
far as its average foresight is dominated by some approach
to such general understanding.

We shall comprehend better the varieties of individual
understanding which go to complete this general equipment
of an ideal business community, if we commence by con¬
sidering the contrast between understanding and routine.

Routine is the god of every social system ; it is the seventh
heaven of business, the essential component in the success
of every factory, the ideal of every statesman. The social
machine should run like clockwork. Every crime should be
followed by an arrest, every arrest by a judicial trial, every
trial by a conviction, every conviction by a punishment,
every punishment by a reformed character. Or, you can
conceive an analogous routine concerning the making of a

8

wi

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

I 14

motor car, starting with the iron in the ore, and the coal in
the mine, and ending with the car driving out of the factory
and with the President of the Corporation signing the divi¬
dend warrants, and renewing his contracts with the mining
Corporations. In such a routine everyone from the humblest
miner to the august president is exactly trained for his
special job. Every action of miner or president is the product
of conditioned reflexes, according to current physiological
phraseology. When the routine is perfect, understanding
can be eliminated, except such minor flashes of intelligence
as are required to deal with familiar accidents, such as a
flooded mine, a prolonged drought, or an epidemic of
influenza. A system will be the product of intelligence.
But when the adequate routine is established, intelligence
vanishes, and the system is maintained by a co-ordination of
conditioned reflexes. What is then required from the humans
is receptivity of special training. No one, from President to
miner, need understand the system as a whole. There will
be no foresight, but there will be complete success in the
maintenance of the routine.

Now it is the beginning of wisdom to understand that social
life is founded upon routine. Unless society is permeated,
through and through, with routine, civilization vanishes. So
many sociological doctrines, the products of acute intellects,
are wrecked by obliviousness to this fundamental sociological
truth. Society requires stability, foresight itself presupposes
stability, and stability is the product of routine. But there
are limits to routine, and it is for the discernment of these
limits, and for the provision of the consequent action, that
foresight is required.

The two extremes of complete understanding and of com¬
plete routine are never realized in human society. But of
the two, routine is more fundamental than understanding,

FORESIGHT

“5

that is to say, routine modified by minor flashes of short-range
intelligence. Indeed the notion of complete understanding
controlling action is an ideal in the clouds, grotesquely at
variance with practical life. But we have under our eyes
countless examples of societies entirely dominated by routine.
The elaborate social organizations of insects appear to be
thoroughgoing examples of routine. Such organizations
achieve far-reaching, complex purposes : they involve a
differentiation of classes, from cows to serfs, from serfs to
workers, from workers to warriors, from warriors to janitors,
and from janitors to queens. Such organizations have regard
to needs in a distant future, especially if the comparatively
short space of life of the individual insects is taken into
account as the unit of measurement.

These insect societies have been astoundingly successful, so
far as concerns survival power. They seem to have a past ex¬
tending over tens of thousands of years, perhaps of millions
of years. It is the greatest of mistakes to believe that it has
required the high-grade intelligence of mankind to construct
an elaborate social organization. A particular instance of
this error is the prevalent assumption that any social routine
whose purposes are not obvious to our analysis is thereby to
be condemned as foolish. We can observe insects performing
elaborate routine actions whose purposes they cannot possibly
understand, which yet are essential either for their own
individual survival or for race-survival.

But these insect societies have one great characteristic in
common. They are not progressive. It is exactly this cha¬
racteristic that discriminates communities of mankind from
communities of insects. Further, this great fact of progres¬
siveness, be it from worse to better, or from better to worse,
has become of greater and greater importance in Western
civilization as we come to modern times. The rate of

8-2

n6

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

change has increased even in my life-time. It is possible that
in future ages mankind may relapse into the stage of stable
societies. But such a relapse is extremely unlikely within any
span of time which we need take into account.

Section III. The recent shortening of the time-span be¬
tween notable changes in social customs is very obvious, if
we examine history. Originally it depended upon some slow
development of physical causes. For example, a gradual
change of physical configuration such as the elevadon of
mountains : the time-span for such a change is of the order
of a million years. Again, a gradual change of climate: the
time-span for such a change is of the order of five thousand
years. Again a gradual over-population of the region occu¬
pied by some community with its consequent swarming
into new territories: having regard to the huge death-rate
of pre-scientific ages, the time-span for such a change was of
the order of five hundred years. Again, the sporadic inven¬
tions of new technologies, such as the chipping of flints, the
invention of fire, the taming of animals, the invention of
metallurgy: in the pre-scientific ages, the average time-span
for such changes was, at least, of the order of five hundred
years. If we compare the technologies of civilizations west
of Mesopotamia at the epochs ioo a.d., the culmination of
the Roman Empire, and 1400 a.d., the close of the Middle
Ages, we find practically no advance in technology. There
was some gain in metallurgy, some elaboration of clock¬
work, the recent invention of gunpowder with its influence
all in the future, some advance in the art of navigation, also
with its influence in the future. If we compare 1400 a.d. with
1700 a.d., there is a great advance; gunpowder, and printing,
and navigation, and the technique of commerce, had pro¬
duced their effect. But even then, the analogy between life
in the eighteenth century and life in the great period of

FORESIGHT

“7

ancient Rome was singularly close, so that the peculiar
relevance of Latin literature was felt vividly. In the fifty
years between 1780 and 1830, a number of inventions came
with a rush into effective operation. The age of steam power
and of machinery was introduced. But for two generations,
from 1830 to 1890, there was a singular uniformity in the
principles of technology which were regulating the structure
of society and the usages of business.

The conclusion to be drawn from this survey is a momen¬
tous one. Our sociological theories, our political philosophy,
our practical maxims of business, our political economy,
and our doctrines of education, are derived from an un¬
broken tradition of great thinkers and of practical examples,
from the age of Plato in the fifth century before Christ to
the end of the last century. The whole of this tradition is
warped by the vicious assumption that each generation will
substantially live amid the conditions governing the lives of
its fathers and will transmit those conditions to mould with
equal force the lives of its children. We are living in the
first period of human history for which this assumption is
false.

Of course in the past, there were great catastrophes: for
example, plagues, floods, barbarian invasions. But, if such
catastrophes were warded off, there was a stable, well-known
condition of civilized life. This assumption subtly pervades
the premises of political economy, and has permitted it to
confine attention to a simplified edition of human nature.
It is at the basis of our conception of the reliable business
man, who has mastered a technique and never looks be¬
yond his contracted horizon. It colours our political philo¬
sophy and our educational theory, with their overwhelming
emphasis on past experience. The note of recurrence domi¬
nates the wisdom of the past, and still persists in many

I 1 8 ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

forms even where explicitly the fallacy of its modern appli¬
cation is admitted. The point is that in the past the time-span
of important change was considerably longer than that of a
single human life. Thus mankind was trained to adapt itself
to fixed conditions.

To-day this time-span is considerably shorter than that of
human life, and accordingly our training must prepare in¬
dividuals to face a novelty of conditions. But there can be
no preparation for the unknown. It is at this point that we
recur to the immediate topic, Foresight. We require such an
understanding of the present conditions, as may give us some
grasp of the novelty which is about to produce a measurable
influence on the immediate future. Yet the doctrine, that
routine is dominant in any society that is not collapsing, must
never be lost sight of. Thus the grounds, in human nature
and in the successful satisfaction of purpose, these grounds
for the current routine must be understood ; and at the same
time the sorts of novelty just entering into social effectiveness
have got to be weighed against the old routine. In this way
the type of modification and the type of persistence exhibited
in the immediate future may be foreseen.

Section IV. It is now time to give some illustrations of
assertions already made. Consider our main conclusions that
our traditional doctrines of sociology, of political philosophy,
of the practical conduct of large business, and of political
economy are largely warped and vitiated by the implicit as¬
sumption of a stable unchanging social system. With this
assumption it is comparatively safe to base reasoning upon
a simplified edition of human nature. For well-known
stimuli working under well-known conditions produce well-
known reactions. It is safe then to assume that human
nature, for the purpose in hand, is adequately described in
terms of some of the major reactions to some' of the major

FORESIGHT II9

stimuli. For example, we can all remember our old friend,
the economic man.

The beauty of the economic man was that we knew exactly
what he was after. Whatever his wants were, he knew them
and his neighbours knew them. His wants were those
developed in a well-defined social system. His father and
grandfather had the same wants, and satisfied them in the
same way. So whenever there was a shortage, everyone —
including the economic man himself — knew what was short,
and knew the way to satisfy the consumer. In fact, the
consumer knew what he wanted to consume. This was the
demand. The producer knew how to produce the required
articles, hence the supply. The men who got the goods on
to the spot first, at the cheapest price, made their fortunes;
the other producers were eliminated. This was healthy
competition. This is beautifully simple and with proper
elaboration is obviously true. It expresses the dominant
truth exactly so far as there are stable well-tried conditions.
But when we are concerned with a social system which in
important ways is changing, this simplified conception of
human relations requires severe qualification.

It is, of course, common knowledge that the whole trend
of political economy during the last thirty or forty years
has been away from these artificial simplifications. Such
sharp-cut notions as The economic man’, ‘supply and
demand’, ‘competition’, are now in process of dilution by
a close study of the actual reactions of various populations
to the stimuli which are relevant to modern commerce.
This exactly illustrates the main thesis. The older political
economy reigned supreme for about a hundred years from the
time of Adam Smith, because in its main assumptions it did
apply to the general circumstances of life as led, then and
for innumerable centuries in the past. These circumstances

120

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

were then already passing away. But it still remained a
dominant truth that in commercial relations men were
dominated by well-conditioned reactions to completely
familiar stimuli.

In the present age, the element of novelty which life
affords is too prominent to be omitted from our calcu¬
lations. A deeper knowledge of the varieties of human
nature is required to determine the reaction, in its character
and its strength, to those elements of novelty which each
decade of years introduces into social life. The possibility
of this deeper knowledge constitutes the Foresight under
discussion.

Another example which concerns sociological habits, and
thence business relations and the shifting values of property,
is to be seen in the history of cities. Throughout the whole
span of civilization up to the present moment, the growth
of condensed aggregates of humans, which we call cities,
has been an inseparable accompaniment of the growth of
civilization. There are many obvious reasons, the defence
of accumulated wealth behind city walls, the concentra¬
tion of materials requisite for manufacture, the concen¬
tration of power in the form of human muscles and, later,
in the form of available heat energy, the ease of mutual
intercourse required for business relations, the pleasure
arising from a concentration of aesthetic and cultural oppor¬
tunities, the advantages of a concentration of governmental
and other directing agencies, administrative, legal, and
military.

But there are disadvantages in cities. As yet no civiliza¬
tion has been self-supporting. Each civilization is born, it
culminates, and it decays. There is a widespread testimony
that this ominous fact is due to inherent biological defects
in the crowded life of cities. Now, slowly and at first faintly,

FORESIGHT

1 2 I

an opposite tendency is showing itself. Better roads and
better vehicles at first induced the wealthier classes to live
on the outskirts of the cities. The urgent need for defence
had also vanished. This tendency is now spreading rapidly
downwards. But a new set of conditions is just showing
itself. Up to the present time, throughout the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries, this new tendency placed the homes
in the immediate suburbs, but concentrated manufacturing
activity, business relations, government, and pleasure, in
the centres of the cities. Apart from the care of children,
and periods of sheer rest, the active lives were spent in
the cities. In some ways, the concentration of such activities
was even more emphasized, and the homes were pushed
outwards even at the cost of the discomfort of commuting.
But, if we examine the trend of technology during the past
generation, the reasons for this concentration are largely
disappearing. Still more, the reasons for the choice of sites
for cities are also altering. Mechanical power can be trans¬
mitted for hundreds of miles, men can communicate almost
instantaneously by telephone, the chiefs of great organiza¬
tions can be transported by airplanes, the cinemas can produce
plays in every village, music, speeches, and sermons can be
broadcast. Almost every reason for the growth of cities, con¬
currently with the growth of civilization, has been profoundly
modified.

What then is to be the future of cities, three hundred
years hence, a hundred years hence, or even thirty years
hence? I do not know. But I venture a guess: that those
who are reasonably fortunate in this foresight will make
their fortunes, and that others will be ruined by mistakes in
calculation.

My second point that the reasons for the choice of sites
for cities have also been modified is illustrated by recent

122

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

changes in my own country, England. The first effect of
the new industrial age of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries was to concentrate population round the coal¬
fields. Thus the central portion of England on its northern
edge has become one huge city, disguised under different
names for its various regional parts. But the novel con¬
ditions are shifting population and manufactures to the south
of England, near to the great southern ports which look
towards the Mediterranean, the South Atlantic Ocean, and
the Panama Canal. They are the best ports, with the easiest
navigation, and with uncrowded land around them. At
present the transmission of electric power is one of the major
pre-occupations of the government of England.

The effect of new technologies on the sites of cities, and
on transformations of cities, is one of the fundamental
problems which must enter into all sociological theories,
including the forecasting of business relations. We must not
exaggerate the importance of these particular examples. They
are just two examples selected from a whole situation which
can be analysed into innumerable examples with the same
moral. I mean nothing so absurd as that all industrialists
should meditate on the future of cities. The topic may be
quite irrelevant to the future activities of most of them.
Also I am ignorant as to how much Political Economy they
should study.

But we are faced with a fluid, shifting situation in the
immediate future. Rigid maxims, a rule-of-thumb routine,
and cast-iron particular doctrines will spell ruin. The
business of the future must be controlled by a somewhat
different type of men to that of previous centuries. The type
is already changing, and has already changed so far as the
leaders are concerned. The Business Schools of Universities
are concerned with spreading this newer type throughout

FORESIGHT 123

the nations by aiming at the production of the requisite
mentality.

Section V. I will conclude this chapter by a sketch of the
Business Mind of the future. In the first place it is funda¬
mental that there be a power of conforming to routine,
of supervising routine, of constructing routine, and of un¬
derstanding routine both as to its internal structure and as
to its external purposes. Such a power is the bedrock of all
practical efficiency. But for the production of the requisite
Foresight, something more is wanted. This extra endowment
can only be described as a philosophic power of understanding
the complex flux of the varieties of human societies: for
instance, the habit of noting varieties of demands on life,
of serious purposes, of frivolous amusements. Such instinctive
grasp of the relevant features of social currents is of supreme
importance. For example, the time-span of various types of
social behaviour is of the essence of their effect on policy.
A widespread type of religious interest, with its consequent
modes of behaviour, has a dominant life of about a hundred
years, while a fashion of dress survives any time between
three months and three years. Methods of agriculture change
slowly. But the scientific world seems to be on the verge of
far-reaching biological discoveries. The assumption of slow
changes in agriculture must therefore be scanned vigilantly.
This example of time-spans can be generalized. The quanti¬
tative aspect of social changes is of the essence of business
relations. Thus the habit of transforming observation of
qualitative changes into quantitative estimates should be a
characteristic of business mentality.

I have said enough to show that the modern commercial
mentality requires many elements of discipline, scientific
and sociological. But the great fact remains that details of
relevant knowledge cannot be foreseen. Thus even for mere

124

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

success, and apart from any question of intrinsic quality of
life, an unspecialized aptitude for eliciting generalizations
from particulars and for seeing the divergent illustration
of generalities in diverse circumstances is required. Such a
reflective power is essentially a philosophic habit: it is the
survey of society from the standpoint of generality. This
habit of general thought, undaunted by novelty, is the gift
of philosophy, in the widest sense of that term.

Section VI. But the motive of success is not enough. It
produces a short-sighted world which destroys the sources
of its own prosperity. The cycles of trade depression which
afflict the world warn us that business relations are infected
through and through with the disease of short-sighted
motives. The robber barons did not conduce to the pros¬
perity of Europe in the Middle Ages, though some of them
died prosperously in their beds. Their example is a warning
to our civilization. Also we must not fall into the fallacy
of thinking of the business world in abstraction from the
rest of the community. The business world is one main part
of the very community which is the subject-matter of our
study. The behaviour of the community is largely dominated
by the business mind. A great society is a society in which
its men of business think greatly of their functions. Low
thoughts mean low behaviour, and after a brief orgy of
exploitation low behaviour means a descending standard of
life. The general greatness of the community, qualitatively
as well as quantitatively, is the first condition for steady
prosperity, buoyant, self-sustained, and commanding credit.
The Greek philosopher who laid the foundation of all our
finer thoughts ended his most marvellous dialogue with the
reflection that the ideal state could never arrive till philo¬
sophers are kings. To-day, in an age of democracy, the kings
are the plain citizens pursuing their various avocations.

FORESIGHT 1 25

There can be no successful democratic society till general
education conveys a philosophic outlook.

Philosophy is not a mere collection of noble sentiments.
A deluge of such sentiments does more harm than good.
Philosophy is at once general and concrete, critical and
appreciative of direct intuition. It is not — or, at least, should
not be — a ferocious debate between irritable professors. It is
a survey of possibilities and their comparison with actualities.
In philosophy, the fact, the theory, the alternatives, and the
ideal, are weighed together. Its gifts are insight and fore¬
sight, and a sense of the worth of life, in short, that sense of
importance which nerves all civilized effort. Mankind can
flourish in the lower stages of life with merely barbaric
flashes of thought. But when civilization culminates, the
absence of a co-ordinating philosophy of life, spread through¬
out the community, spells decadence, boredom, and the
slackening of effort.

Every epoch has its character determined by the way its
populations react to the material events which they en¬
counter. This reaction is determined by their basic beliefs —
by their hopes, their fears, their judgments of what is worth
while. They may rise to the greatness of an opportunity,
seizing its drama, perfecting its art, exploiting its adventure,
mastering intellectually and physically the network of re¬
lations that constitutes the very being of the epoch. On
the other hand, they may collapse before the perplexities
confronting them. How they act depends partly on their
courage, partly on their intellectual grasp. Philosophy is an
attempt to clarify those fundamental beliefs which finally
determine the emphasis of attention that lies at the base of
character.

Mankind is now in one of its rare moods of shifting its
outlook. The mere compulsion of tradition has lost its force.

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ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

It is our business — philosophers, students, and practical men
— to re-create and re-enact a vision of the world, including
those elements of reverence and order without which society
lapses into riot, and penetrated through and through with
unflinching rationality. Such a vision is the knowledge
which Plato identified with virtue. Epochs for which,
within the limits of their development, this vision has been
widespread are the epochs unfading in the memory of
mankind.

Our discussion has insensibly generalized itself. It has
passed beyond the topic of Commercial Relations to the
function of a properly concrete philosophy in guiding the
purposes of mankind.

EPILOGUE TO PART I

At this stage we conclude the consideration of that group
of ideas that most directly contributed to the civilization of
the behaviour-systems of human beings in their intercourse
with each other. This improvement depended on the slow
growth of mutual respect, sympathy, and general kindliness.
All these feelings can exist with the minimum of intellec¬
tuality. Their basis is emotional, and humanity acquired
these emotions by reason of its unthinking activities amid
the course of nature.

But mentality as it emerges into co-ordinated activity has
a tremendous effect in selecting, emphasizing, and disin¬
tegrating. We have been considering the emergence of ideas
from activities, and the effect of ideas in modifying the
activities from which they emerge. Ideas arise as explanatory
of customs and they end by founding novel methods and
novel institutions. In the preceding chapters we have watched
instances of their transition from one to other of these two
modes of functioning.

PART II

COSMOLOGICAL

CHAPTER VII

LAWS OF NATURE

Section I. The previous part of this book dealt with the
influence exerted by the Platonic and Christian doctrines of
the human soul upon the sociological development of the
European races. In this second part of the book, I shall deal
with the influence of scientific ideas upon European culture,
and with the more general cosmological ideas thus generated
and presupposed.

It would be useless to attempt a history of science within
this compass. Accordingly, I shall confine myself to the
most general ideas at the base of the whole development of
science. I mean the concepts of Speculation and of Scholar¬
ship, and the various notions of the Order of Nature, and
of Nature itself. In short, my topic is 4 Cosmologies, Ancient
and Modern5, together with the variety of methods, specu¬
lative and scholarly, employed in their production. Special
developments of learning will only be cited in order to
exemplify the specializations of general ideas amid changing
epochs of Western Culture.

Modern Europe and America have derived their civiliza¬
tion from the races whose countries border the Eastern
Mediterranean. In the earlier chapters, Greece and Pales¬
tine were the regions providing the initial formulations of
the ideas concerning the essence of human nature. When
we examine the history of science, to these two countries

9-2

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ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

we must add Egypt. These three countries are the direct
ancestors of our modern civilization.

Of course there is a long tale of civilization behind them.
Mesopotamia, Crete, Phoenicia, and India, China, also con¬
tributed. But whatever of scientific or religious value has
passed into modern life, finally reached us through the
mediation of these three countries, Egypt, Greece, Palestine.
Of these countries, Egypt provided the mature technology,
arising from three thousand years of secure civilization,
Palestine provided the final religious cosmology, Greece pro¬
vided the clear-cut generalizations leading to philosophy
and science. This logical lucidity also tinges the remaining
legacy from Greece, its art and imaginative literature. Every
Greek statue expresses the welding of beauty to regularity
of geometrical form: every Greek play investigates the inter¬
weaving of physical circumstances arising from the Order
of Nature with states of mind which issue from the urge of
the Moral Order.

£Canst thou by searching find out God?5 is good Hebrew,
but it is bad Greek. The effort to comprehend the great
fact which procures the order in the Universe urged Greek
thinkers to that culmination when Plato and Aristotle de¬
fined the complex of general ideas forming the imperishable
origin of Western thought. The work was only accom¬
plished just in time. In the very lifetime of Aristotle the
political and cultural barriers collapsed; and the subsequent
Hellenistic development at Alexandria and elsewhere was
the joint enterprise of Greeks, Egyptians, Semites, and the
mixed races of Syria and Asia Minor. The untroubled faith
in lucidity within the depths of things, to be captured by
some happy glance of speculation, was lost for ever. Duller
men were content with limited accuracy and constructed
special sciences : thicker intellects gloried in the notion that

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133

the foundations of the world were laid amid impenetrable
fog. They conceived God in their own image, and depicted
him with a positive dislike of efforts after understanding
beyond assigned methodologies. Satan acquired an intel¬
lectual character, and fell by reason of an indecent desire to
understand his Creator. It was the downfall of Greece.

Section II. The progress of mankind proceeds by de¬
vious paths. The shift from the bright Hellenic age, whose
final period was centred in Athens, to the Hellenistic age,
with Alexandria as its intellectual capital, corresponds to
a new direction of constructive genius. The special sciences
were founded. Their principles were defined, their methods
were determined, appropriate deductions were elicited.
Learning was stabilized. It was furnished with methodo¬
logies, and was handed over to University professors of the
modern type. Doctors of Medicine, Mathematicians, Astro¬
nomers, Grammarians, Theologians, for more than six
hundred years dominated the schools of Alexandria, issuing
text-books, treatises, controversies, and dogmatic definitions.
Literature was replaced by Grammar, and Speculation by
the Learned Tradition.

These men conventionalized learning. But they secured it.
Their work survived two great religious revolutions, the rise
of Christianity and the rise of Mahometanism. It provided
both these religions with their philosophical theologies. It
fitted them out with heresies and with orthodoxies.

In the Western Roman Empire, the Christian Church,
armed with Hellenistic thought, captured the intellects of
the victorious barbarians and civilized Western Europe up
to the Arctic Ocean. Along the south of the Mediterranean
the Mahometan conquerors carried Hellenistic thought, as
coloured by the mentalities of Arabs, Jews, and Persians,
through Africa into Spain. From Spain, the Mahometan

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ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

and Jewish versions made contact with the Christian version
of Alexandrian culture. This fusion produced the brilliant
culmination of Christian Scholasticism in the thirteenth
century; and, in the seventeenth century, Spinoza.

The note of Hellenism is delight, speculation, discoursive
literature: the note of Hellenistic Alexandria is concentra¬
tion, thoroughness, investigation of the special types of order
appertaining to special topics. The great Alexandrians were
either right or wrong: Euclid either did, or did not make
his text-book of Geometry logically coherent: the Ptolemaic
doctrine of the heavens is true or false : Athanasius is directly
opposed to Arius: and Cyril to Nestorius. The nearest
analogues to the Alexandrian theological debates are the
modern debates among mathematical physicists on the nature
of the atom. The special topics differ slightly ; but the methods
and the men are identical.

It is unmeaning bluntly to ask of Plato, whether he be
right or wrong, in the same exact sense in which we frame
the question about the Alexandrians. When any eminent
scholar has converted Plato into a respectable professor, by
providing him with a coherent system, we quickly find that
Plato in a series of Dialogues has written up most of the
heresies from his own doctrines. It is as though Ptolemy
had emitted the speculations of Aristarchus, and as though
Athanasius had suggested the profanities of Arius.

I am not alluding to the mere fact that men change their
opinions, with the advance of age, or with the advance or
decay of knowledge. The important point is the way in
which opinions are held, and the weight attached to parti¬
cular modes of statement. St Augustine changed his opinions.
He not only published for all ages the tragic intensity
of feeling which the conversion involved, but also he de¬
voted himself to exact statements of his new doctrines. He

LAWS OF NATURE

135

remained a Platonist, and his interest in the doctrine of
Grace was a Platonic interest in the exact expression how
finite human life can participate in the Divine Perfections.
He performed an immense service to civilization by pro¬
viding Western Europe with accurate definitions on great
topics just before the oncoming of the Barbarians. He
secured that western Christianity should persist as a civilizing
influence, and not degenerate into hereditary superstition
of the Abyssinian type. But his attitude to his own doctrines
was very different from that of Plato. Consider some of
Plato’s phrases about his own ideas: “If, then, Socrates,
we find ourselves in many points unable to make our dis¬
course of the generation of gods and the universe in every
way wholly consistent and exact, you must not be surprised.
Nay, we must be well content if we can provide an account
not less likely than another’s; we must remember that
I who speak, and you who are my audience, are but men
and should be satisfied to ask for no more than the likely
story”.1

Again: “Perhaps they may be in a difficulty; and if this
is the case, there is a possibility that they may accept a
suggestion of ours respecting the nature of essence, having
nothing of their own to offer”.2

Can we imagine Augustine urbanely approaching Pelagius
with £a suggestion of ours respecting the nature of Grace’?
It is quite true that passages can be quoted from Plato,
more particularly from The Laws , which would justify all
the persecution of atheists that has disgraced Europe. But the
passages quoted above give the general tone of the Dialogues
in their handling of the precise expression of speculative
notions.

1 The Timaeus, A. E. Taylor’s translation.

a The Sophist , Jowett’s translation.

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

136

Section III. In many ways Aristotle and Epicurus fore¬
shadow the transition from Hellenic speculation to the exact
scholarship of Alexandria. In both of them we find an effort
towards system, explicitly stated and exactly phrased. Of
course, Lucretius is our main authority for the Epicurean
doctrines.

If we merely knew that great schools of exact scientific
investigation had arisen in the succeeding generation, un¬
doubtedly modern critical scholarship would have assigned
to Aristotle’s influence the honour of their origination. We
can imagine the contrast which would have been drawn
between the barrenness of mere speculation and the fruit¬
fulness of Aristotle’s power of detailed observation.

Unfortunately, cold fact points in exactly the opposite
direction. In the first place Aristotle himself derived his
own sources of thought from Plato’s theoretical activity.
He dissected fishes with Plato’s thoughts in his head. He
systematized the welter of Platonic suggestions, and in the
course of his work he modified, improved, and spoilt. But
he did introduce into sciences other than Astronomy the
much-needed systematic practice of passing beyond theory
to direct observation of details. Unfortunately this was the
one aspect of his life which never had any direct influence
on any succeeding epoch.

Again, in point of fact the Alexandrian culture derived
directly from Plato. Its thought was through and through
Platonic both in science and theology. But it was not for
nothing that Alexandria was situated in a land of old, secure
technology. There were crafts and learned professions with
traditions of detailed procedure stretching back for thou¬
sands of years. The schools of Alexandria were thronged
with sons of priests, sons of metallurgists, sons of makers
of implements for irrigation and agriculture, sons of land-

LAWS OF NATURE

137

surveyors. It is no wonder that the first emergence of modern
scholarship studied in a modern university, took place when
Platonic speculation was transferred to a land of old pro¬
fessional activity.

Undoubtedly the chasm between Hellenic mentality and
mediaeval scholastic learning was due to many influences
accumulating their effects through a period of a thousand
years. But the greatest gap in the transition is the first one,
when the capital of Mediterranean learning was transferred
from Athens to Alexandria. The general type of the cul¬
tural development of Western Civilization was then pre¬
determined. How science should be developed: How mathe¬
matics should evolve: How religion, Jewish, Christian,
Mahometan, should shape its various theologies. The
modern world is primarily Alexandrian; and only for a
short period of about a hundred years, to be placed some¬
where between the Council of Constance and the Sack of
Rome in 1527, did the Athenian tone of mind prevail:
perhaps also earlier in the Italy of the Augustan epoch. The
difference between the two, namely the Hellenic and the
Hellenistic types of mentality, may be roughly described as
that between speculation and scholarship. For progress, both
are necessary. But, in fact, on the stage of history they are
apt to appear as antagonists. Speculation, by entertaining
alternative theories, is superficially sceptical, disturbing to
established modes of prejudice. But it obtains its urge from
a deep ultimate faith, that through and through the nature
of things is penetrable by reason. Scholarship, by its strict
attention to accepted methodologies, is superficially con¬
servative of belief. But its tone of mind leans towards a
fundamental negation. For scholars the reasonable topics in
the world are penned in isolated regions, this subject-matter
or that subject-matter. Your thorough-going scholar resents

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

138

the airy speculation which connects his own patch of know¬
ledge with that of his neighbour. He finds his fundamental
concepts interpreted, twisted, modified. He has ceased to
be king of his own castle, by reason of speculations of un¬
comfortable generality, violating the very grammar of his
thoughts. Pope Adrian the Sixth exhibited himself as a
typical scholar by remarking that in Luther’s theological
works so many errors could be found that any tyro could
point them out.

New directions of thought arise from flashes of intuition
bringing new material within the scope of scholarly learning.
They commence as the sheer ventures of rash speculation.
They may fortunately obtain quick acceptance, or they may
initiate a quarrel of scholars from which all tinge of specu¬
lation has faded. Pope Leo the Tenth voiced the vanishing
Athenian epoch when he characterized the Lutheran disputes
as a quarrel of monks.

Pure speculation, undisciplined by the scholarship of de¬
tailed fact or the scholarship of exact logic, is on the whole
more useless than pure scholarship, unrelieved by speculation.
The proper balance of the two factors in progressive learning
depends on the character of the epoch in question and on
the capacities of particular individuals. Also it is a curious
fact, somewhat lost sight of in Greek thought, that, notwith¬
standing the law of the Golden Mean between contrasted
components, yet a certain excessiveness seems a necessary
element in all greatness. In some direction or other we must
devote ourselves beyond what would be warranted by the
analysis of pure reason.

One aspect of the adventure of ideas is this story of the
interplay of speculation and scholarship, a strife sustained
through the ages of progress. This history discloses the
happy balance attained in periods of culminating greatness,

LAWS OF NATURE I39

and it also exhibits the tinge of excessiveness in all such
peaks of achievement. Thereby it gives the reason for the
tragic transience of supreme moments in human life.

Section IV. The notion of Law, that is to say, of some
measure of regularity or of persistence or of recurrence,
is an essential element in the urge towards technology,
methodology, scholarship, and speculation. Apart from a
certain smoothness in the nature of things, there can be
no knowledge, no useful method, no intelligent purpose.
Lacking an element of Law, there remains a mere welter
of details with no foothold for comparison with any other
such welter, in the past, in the future, or circumambient in
the present. But the expression of this notion of Law with
due accuracy, and with due regard to what in fact is pre¬
supposed in human purposes, is a matter of extreme difficulty.
Analogously to the histories of all the more general ideas, the
notion of Law has entered into the explicit consciousness of
various epochs under every variety of specialization, arising
from its coalescence with other components in the popular
cosmology.

The difficulty in all such notions of supreme generality
is that conscious attention is not naturally directed to any
factor which is a ‘matter of course’ in experience. Attention
is riveted upon ‘news’, and ‘news’ involves some aroma of
capriciousness. It is useless to recur to periods of human
history which lie beyond the reach of direct evidence. But
anthropologists report the almost universal prevalence of
tribal ceremonies having reference to the succession of the
yearly seasons, more particularly to the Spring, the Harvest,
and Mid-winter. Undoubtedly, as we view them now, there
is a reference to agriculture in such celebrations. Now
agriculture marks the first decisive step towards modern
civilization. Its introduction marks the arrival of a stage of

140

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

high-grade reflection upon the course of events. It requires
a forecast of the course of nature months ahead. Many an
ape-man must have snatched up a stone wherewith to hit
somebody, either another man or other animal, on the head,
without any reflection upon the course of nature beyond the
next few minutes. Also he might notice that some stones
are better than others as lethal weapons, and he might even
help them out by chipping them. He is then approaching
civilization. But he — or more probably, she — has crossed the
great divide, when he puts seeds into a patch of earth and
waits for a season.

It is obvious that seasonal ceremonies must extend back¬
wards in time far beyond the introduction of agriculture.
The differences between the seasons impose differences of
behaviour upon all living things, vegetables and animals
alike. The seasonal urge towards change of habit, hiberna¬
tion or migration, must have begotten some expression of
emotional restlessness. The interest of agriculture comes in
when we consider the later interpretation of the seasonal
ceremonies in which the tribe had been indulging for count¬
less ages. Civilization did not start with a social contract
determining modes of behaviour. Its earliest effort was the
slow introduction of ideas explanatory of modes of be¬
haviour and of inrushes of emotion which already dominated
their lives. Undoubtedly ideas modified the practice. But
in the main practice precedes thought; and thought is
mainly concerned with the justification or the modification
of a pre-existing situation.

Now, apart from the practice of agriculture, animal habits
are mainly based on the massive recurrence of the seasons,
heat and frost, rain and drought, day and night. There
was stolid recurrent matter of fact, with accompanying
rhythms of emotion and ritual. Vagrant questions may have

LAWS OF NATURE

I4I

disturbed exceptional minds. But there was little to provoke
tribal interest in explanation. There must have been some
instances to provoke attention, because there was, in fact,
among some tribes of our ancestors, a drift towards better
ways of life. But I am seeking to determine the dividing
line after which the curiously quick acceleration of civilized
thought may conceivably have arisen. In the earlier stage
the convenient unit of time is of the order of a hundred
thousand years. In the later phases it shortens up to ten
thousand years, to five thousand years, to one thousand years,
to a hundred years.

Probably there was a concurrence of many causes. But
among such causes the introduction of agriculture must be
given a high place for its effectiveness in quickening pro¬
gress. It at once introduced the capriciousness of the
weather as a major topic of tribal interest. Also it provoked
attention to the mystery of germination, and to the de¬
pendence of vegetable growth upon the seasonal phases. It
compelled the tribe to descend from passive acquiescence
in a general matter of course towards active interest in the
details. It led to a search for precautions, and discovery
requires understanding. Of course, as we all know, the novel
situation did not require every tribe to advance. Also the
masses of mankind are always liable to reach some stable
level of custom, and to halt progress there. But human life
had then reached a stage at which obvious problems were
presented to the more active minds, wherever such existed.

We inherit legends, weird, horrible, beautiful, expressing
in curious, specialized ways the interweaving of law and
capriciousness in the mystery of things. It is the problem
of good and evil. Sometimes the law is good and the
capriciousness evil; sometimes the law is iron and evil and
the capriciousness is merciful and good. But from savage

142

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

legends up to Hume’s civilized Dialogues on Natural religion,
with the conversation between Job and his friends as an
intermediate between the two, the same problem is discussed.
Science and technology are based upon law. Human be¬
haviour exhibits custom mitigated by impulse. What exactly
do we mean by the notion of the Laws of Nature?

Section V. At the present time, there are prevalent four
main doctrines concerning the Laws of Nature: the doctrine
of Law as immanent, the doctrine of Law as imposed, and
the doctrine of Law as observed order of succession, in other
words, Law as mere description, and lastly the later doctrine
of Law as conventional interpretation. It will be convenient
first to discuss these four alternative doctrines from the
standpoint of to-day. We shall then be in a better position
to understand the chequered history of the notion in civilized
thought.

By the doctrine of Law as immanent it is meant that the
order of nature expresses the characters of the real things
which jointly compose the existences to be found in nature.
When we understand the essences of these things, we thereby
know their mutual relations to each other. Thus, according
as there are common elements in their various characters,
there will necessarily be corresponding identities in their
mutual relations. In other words, some partial identity of
pattern in the various characters of natural things issues in
some partial identity of pattern in the mutual relations of
those things. These identities of pattern in the mutual
relations are the Laws of Nature. Conversely, a Law is
explanatory of some community in character pervading the
things which constitute Nature. It is evident that the doctrine
involves the negation of ‘absolute being’. It presupposes the
essential interdependence of things.

There are some consequences to this doctrine*. In the first

LAWS OF NATURE

143

place, it follows that scientists are seeking for explanations
and not merely for simplified descriptions of their observa¬
tions. In the second place the exact conformation of nature
to any law is not to be expected. If all the things concerned
have the requisite common character, then the pattern of
mutual relevance which expresses that character will be
exactly illustrated. But in general we may expect that a
large proportion of things do possess the requisite character
and a minority do not possess it. In such a case, the mutual
relations of these things will exhibit lapses when the law fails
to obtain illustration. In so far as we are merely interested
in a confused result of many instances, then the law can be
said to have a statistical character. It is now the opinion of
physicists that most of the laws of physics, as known in the
nineteenth century, are of this character.

Thirdly, since the laws of nature depend on the individual
characters of the things constituting nature, as the things
change, then correspondingly the laws will change. Thus
the modern evolutionary view of the physical universe should
conceive of the laws of nature as evolving concurrently
with the things constituting the environment. Thus the
conception of the Universe as evolving subject to fixed,
eternal laws regulating all behaviour should be abandoned.
Fourthly, a reason can now be produced why we should
put some limited trust in induction. For if we assume an
environment largely composed of a sort of existences whose
natures we partly understand, then we have some knowledge
of the laws of nature dominating that environment. But
apart from that premise and apart from the doctrine of
Immanent Law, we can have no knowledge of the future.
We should then acknowledge blank ignorance, and not make
pretences about probability.

Fifthly, the doctrine of Immanent Law is untenable unless

144

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

we can construct a plausible metaphysical doctrine according
to which the characters of the relevant things in nature are the
outcome of their interconnections, and their interconnections
are the outcome of their characters. This involves some
doctrine of Internal Relations.

Finally, the doctrine of Immanence is through and through
a rationalistic doctrine. It is explanatory of the possibility of
understanding nature.

Section VI. The doctrine of Imposed Law adopts the
alternative metaphysical doctrine of External Relations be¬
tween the existences which are the ultimate constituents of
nature. The character of each of these ultimate things is
thus conceived as its own private qualification. Such an ex¬
istent is understandable in complete disconnection from any
other such existent: the ultimate truth is that it requires
nothing but itself in order to exist. But in fact there is
imposed on each such existent the necessity of entering into
relationships with the other ultimate constituents of nature.
These imposed behaviour patterns are the Laws of Nature.
But you cannot discover the natures of the relata by any
study of the Laws of their relations. Nor, conversely, can
you discover the laws by inspection of the natures.

The explanation of the doctrine of Imposition both sug¬
gests a certain type of Deism, and conversely it is the out¬
come of such a Deistic belief if already entertained. For
example, we know from Newton’s own statements that this
was exactly how the Deistic problem presented itself to him.
He definitely stated that the correlated modes of behaviour
of the bodies forming the solar system required God for the
imposition of the principles on which all depended. He
was certainly doubtful, indeed more than doubtful, as to
whether the Law of Gravity was the ultimate statement of
principles imposed by God. But he certainly < thought that

LAWS OF NATURE

145

the conception of the solar system exhibited in his Principia
was sufficiently ultimate to make obvious the necessity of
a God imposing Law. Newton was certainly right to this
extent, that the whole doctrine of Imposition is without
interest apart from the correlative doctrine of a transcendent
imposing Deity. This is also a Cartesian doctrine.

The doctrine of Imposition very naturally follows from
Descartes’ notion of ‘substance’. Indeed the phrase ‘re¬
quiring nothing but itself in order to exist’ occurs in his
Principles of Philosophy. The whole Cartesian apparatus of
Deism, substantial materialism, and imposed law, in con¬
junction with the reduction of physical relations to the notion
of correlated motions with mere spatio-temporal character,
constitutes the simplified notion of Nature with which
Galileo, Descartes, and Newton finally launched modern
science on its triumphant career. If success be a guarantee
of truth, no other system of thought has enjoyed a tithe of
such success since mankind started on its job of thinking.
Within three hundred years it has transformed human life,
in its intimate thoughts, its technologies, its social behaviour,
and its ambitions.

It follows from the Deism, which is part of the whole
conception, that the Laws of Nature will be exactly obeyed.
Certainly, what God meant he did. When he said, Let
there be light, there was light and not a mere imitation or
a statistical average. Thus the statistical notion, though it
may explain some facts of our confused perception, is not
applicable to the ultimate, imposed laws.

But even before Descartes, it was the implicit belief in
some form of imposition, with its consequent exactness,
that constituted the motive force in scientific research. Why
should educated men have believed that there was anything
to find out? Suppose that the doctrine of immanence had

wi

10

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

I46

prevailed in Europe and in Mahometan Asia. Why should
men assume that there were definite laws which even
beyond the limits of meticulous observation underlie the
apparent capriciousness of physical details? There are
certain grand obvious uniformities, Day follows Night, and
again relapses into Night, the Mountains endure, and Birth
proceeds. But these grand regularities are shot through
and through with details apparently capricious. The very
savages saw that, and tremblingly worshipped malignant
demons. But civilized men, who understand the doctrine of
immanence, should draw the conclusion that the dominance
of common traits of character throughout the constituents
of nature is only very partial. There is no reason why
it should be otherwise. A restless search for detailed ex¬
planation is futile, based upon no approach to probability.
If in the past men had believed thus, to-day there would be
no science. And even to-day, how little do we know about
physiology. Also an individual electron is a rare bird whose
behaviour is unpredictable: our information about electrons
mostly concerns flocks numbering millions. What reason is
there to expect success if we seek to push the reign of law
one step further towards minute detail? Indeed, physicists
in their recent researches have disclosed a novel illustration
of capriciousness. These men, trained in the Positivist doc¬
trine, have at once suggested the uselessness of further search
for Taw’. Unless the psychology of mental behaviour still
include some traces derived from the notion of Deistic
imposition, even to-day the progress of science would cease
by reason of the failure of hope. A considerable proportion
of present-day philosophy is devoted to the endeavour by
means of subtle argument to evade this plain inexorable
conclusion.

Lastly apart from some notion of imposed* Law, the doc-

LAWS OF NATURE

147

trine of immanence provides absolutely no reason why the
Universe should not be steadily relapsing into lawless chaos.
In fact, the Universe, as understood in accordance with the
doctrine of Immanence, should exhibit itself as including a
stable actuality whose mutual implication with the remainder
of things secures an inevitable trend towards order. The
Platonic 'persuasion’ is required.

Section VII. Of the three earlier theories, there remains
the Positivist doctrine concerning Law, namely, that a Law
of Nature is merely an observed persistence of pattern in the
observed succession of natural things: Law is then merely
Description. There is an attractive simplicity about this doc¬
trine. The two preceding doctrines lead us to the dubieties
of metaphysics, such as the doctrine of internal relations
or the existence and nature of God. But this third doctrine
evades all such difficulties.

It presupposes that we have direct acquaintance with a
succession of things. This acquaintance is analysable into a
succession of things observed. But our direct acquaintance
consists not only in distinct observations of the distinct
things in succession, but also it includes a comparative
knowledge of the successive observations. Acquaintance is
thus cumulative and comparative. The laws of nature are
nothing else than the observed identities of pattern per¬
sisting throughout the series of comparative observations.
Thus a law of nature says something about things observed
and nothing more.

The pre-occupation of science is then the search for simple
statements which in their joint effect will express every¬
thing of interest concerning the observed recurrences. This
is the whole tale of science, that and nothing more. It is the
great Positivist doctrine, largely developed in the first half of
the nineteenth century, and ever since growing in influence.

10-2

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

I48

It tells us to keep to things observed, and to describe them
as simply as we can. This is all we can know. Laws are
statements of observed facts. This doctrine dates back to
Epicurus, and embodies his appeal to the plain man, away
from metaphysics and mathematics. The observed facts of
clear experience are understandable, and nothing else. Also
‘understanding’ means ‘simplicity of description’.

Without doubt this Positivist doctrine contains a funda¬
mental truth about scientific methodology. For example,
consider the greatest of all scientific generalizations, Newton’s
Law of Gravitation: Two particles of matter attract each
other with a force directly proportional to the product of
their masses and inversely proportional to the square of
their distance. The notion of ‘force’ refers to the notion of
the addition of a component to the vector acceleration of
either particle. It also refers to the notion of the masses of the
particles. Again the notion of mass is also explicitly referred
to in the statement. Thus the mutual spatial relations of
the particles, and their individual masses, are required for
the Law. To this extent the Law is an expression of the
presumed characters of the particles concerned. But the
form of the Law, namely the product of the masses and the
inverse square of the distance, is purely based upon descrip¬
tion of observed fact. A large part of Newton’s Principia
is devoted to a mathematical investigation proving that
the description is adequate for his purposes ; it collects
many details under one principle. Newton himself insisted
upon this very point. He was not speculating: he was not
explaining. Whatever your cosmological doctrines may be,
the motions of the planets and the fall of the stones, so far as
they have been directly measured, conform to his Law. He is
enunciating a formula which expresses observed correlations
of observed facts.

LAWS OF NATURE

149

Without the shadow of a doubt, all science bases itself
upon this procedure. It is the first rule of scientific method —
Enunciate observed correlations of observed fact. This is the
great Baconian doctrine, namely, Observe and observe, until
finally you detect a regularity of sequence. The scholastics
had trusted to metaphysical dialectic giving them secure
knowledge about the nature of things, including the physical
world, the spiritual world, and the existence of God. Thence
they deduced the various laws, immanent and imposed, which
reigned throughout Nature.

Another difference between Scholasticism and the Moderns
is in respect to criticism and reliance upon authority. But
this distinction has been overstressed and misunderstood.
The Scholastics were intensely critical, but they were critical
within a different sphere of thought from that occupying
the Moderns. Again modern scientists rely upon authority,
but they rely upon different authorities from those to whom
the Scholastics appealed. Undoubtedly the later Scholastics
were uncritical in their appeal to their chosen authority,
Aristotle, especially and most unfortunately in regard to
his physics. The Moderns push their criticism further. But
the Scholastics and the modern Scientists are alike scholars
of the Alexandrian type. They have the same sort of merit
and the same sort of defect. Also, the sort of person who
was a scholastic doctor in a mediaeval university, to-day
is a scientific professor in a modern university. Again the
Scholastics differed among themselves in opinion widely. The
earlier set were not even Aristotelians, the later set were not
all Thomists. Analogously, modern scientists differ among
themselves, about details and about the general doctrine of
the Laws of Nature.

Within the sphere of dialectic debate, the Scholastics
were supremely critical. They trusted Aristotle because they

I5°

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

could derive from him a coherent system of thought. It was
a criticized trust. Unfortunately, they did not reflect that
some of his main ideas depended upon his direct acquaintance
with experienced fact. They trusted to the logical coherence
of the system as a guarantee of the unrestricted relevance
of his primary notions. They thus accepted his confusion —
when there was confusion — of superficial aspects with funda¬
mental principles of widest generality. Their method for the
furtherance of natural knowledge was endless debate, un¬
relieved by recurrence to direct observation. Unfortunately
also their instrument of debate, Aristotelian Logic, was a
more superficial weapon than they deemed it. Automatically
it kept in the background some of the more fundamental
topics for thought. Such topics are the quantitative relations
examined in mathematics, and the complex possibilities
of multiple relationship within a system. All these topics,
and others, were kept in the background by Aristotelian
Logic.

Fortunately the scholastic age of Alexandrian scholarship
dominated Europe for centuries, and bestowed upon civi¬
lization priceless treasures of thought. It was an age of
immense progress. But a scholarly age works within rigid
limitations. Fortunately, a revival of Hellenism over¬
whelmed the Hellenistic unity of the Middle Age. Plato
arose as if from his tomb. Vagrant speculation and direct
observation broke up the scholarly system. New interests,
new gods, prevailed. The new basis for thought was the
report upon facts, directly observed, directly employed.
Fortunately, in the subsidence of the Italian Renaissance of
the fifteenth century, the drama of the transference of culture
from Athens to Alexandria was again repeated. Europe
gradually entered upon a new scholarly age. The modern
historian appeared, the modern critical literature appeared,

LAWS OF NATURE

!5I

the modern man of science appeared, modern technology
appeared. The old Egyptian metallurgists, the Semitic
mathematicians, and the mediaeval scholastics were avenged.

But modern scholarship and modern science reproduce the
same limitations as dominated the bygone Hellenistic epoch,
and the bygone Scholastic epoch. They canalize thought
and observation within predetermined limits, based upon
inadequate metaphysical assumptions dogmatically assumed.
The modern assumptions differ from older assumptions, not
wholly for the better. They exclude from rationalistic thought
more of the final values of existence. The intimate timidity of
professionalized scholarship circumscribes reason by reducing
its topics to triviality, for example, to bare sensa and to
tautologies. It then frees itself from criticism by dogmatically
handing over the remainder of experience to an animal faith
or a religious mysticism, incapable of rationalization. The
world will again sink into the boredom of a drab detail of
rational thought, unless we retain in the sky some reflection
of light from the sun of Hellenism.

CHAPTER VIII

COSMOLOGIES

Section I. At the close of the previous chapter we were
left with four antagonistic schools of thought regarding the
analysis of the notion of Law, The School of Immanence,
The School of Imposition, The Positivist School of Obser¬
vation, that is to say, of mere Description, and finally The
School of Conventional Interpretation. We find that each of
these schools could produce grave reasons in confirmation of
its own doctrine.

There is no greater hindrance to the progress of thought
than an attitude of irritated party-spirit. Urbanity, the
urbanity of Plato and, if we may trust his Dialogues , the
urbanity of Athenian society, were part of the intellectual
genius of those times. The vicious antagonisms of subsequent
theologians, some centuries later, hid from them considera¬
tions which they ought never to have forgotten, and have
hidden from us the metaphysical genius of their own con¬
tributions to thought.

We will recommence by scanning the history of these
doctrines of Natural Law, with the view of determining
their exact points of divergence, and the measure of con¬
ciliation of which they are capable. In the previous chapter
Plato’s urbane preface to a philosophical suggestion was
quoted. The suggestion itself is now relevant to the present
lecture :

“My suggestion would be, that anything which possesses
any sort of power to affect another, or to be affected by

COSMOLOGIES

r53

another even for a moment, however trifling the cause and
however slight and momentary the effect, has real existence;
and I hold that the definition of being is simply power.”1

In the subsequent conduct of the dialogue Plato rises
to the height of his genius as a metaphysician. But he also
wrestles with the difficulty of making language express any¬
thing beyond the familiarities of daily life. It is misleading
to study the history of ideas without constant remembrance
of the struggle of novel thought with the obtuseness of
language.

Also it is interesting to notice that, according to Plato,
the distinguishing mark of the Philosopher in contrast to
the Sophist is his resolute attempt to reconcile conflicting
doctrines, each with its own solid ground of support. In
the history of ideas the doctrine of Speculation is at least as
important as the doctrines for Speculation.

Section II. But, to return to Plato’s suggestion — “and
I hold that the definition of being is simply power”.

This statement can be construed in terms of the notion of
imposed law, namely, that it is an external imposition on
each existent, that it be correlated with determinate causal
action on other such existents. But such an interpretation
neglects the exact wording, Plato says that it is the definition
of being that it exert power and be subject to the exertion
of power. This means that the essence of being is to be
implicated in causal action on other beings. It is the doctrine
of Law as immanent. Further, a few sentences later he pro¬
ceeds: “. . .being, as being known, is acted on by knowledge,
and is therefore in motion, for that which is in a state of
rest cannot be acted upon as we affirm. . . . Can we imagine
being to be devoid of life and mind, and to remain in awful
unmeaningness an everlasting fixture?”

1 Sophist, 247, Jowett’s translation.

154

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

Notice that in this argument, that which is not acted upon
is a fixture. Plato denies that being can be conceived “in
awful unmeaningness an everlasting fixture”. It is therefore
acted upon. This agrees with his primary definition, that
‘being’ is the agent in action, and the recipient of action.
Thus, in these passages Plato enunciates the doctrine that
‘ action and reaction ’ belong to the essence of being : though
the mediation of ‘life and mind’ is invoked to provide the
medium of activity. This notion of a medium, connecting the
eternality of being with the fluency of becoming, takes many
shapes in Plato’s Dialogues. Very probably, indeed almost
certainly, passages inconsistent with this doctrine can be found
in the Dialogues. For the moment, the interesting fact is that
in these passages in this Dialogue we find a clear enunciation
of the doctrine of Law as immanent.

The early, naive trend of Semitic monotheism, Jewish and
Mahometan, is towards the notion of Law imposed by the fiat
of the One God. Subsequent speculation wavers between
these two extremes, seeking their reconciliation. In this, as
in most other matters, the history of Western thought consists
in the attempted fusion of ideas which in their origin are
predominantly Hellenic, with ideas which in their origin are
predominantly Semitic. The modern scholar, with his tinge
of speculation, is an Egyptian employing his wisdom upon
his Hellenic and Semitic heritage.

In this instance, the extremes of the two doctrines of Law
lead on the one hand to the extreme monotheistic doctrine
of God, as essentially transcendent and only accidentally
immanent, and on the other hand to the pantheistic doctrine
of God, as essentially immanent and in no way transcendent.

Plato in the Timaeus affords an early instance of this
wavering between the two doctrines of Law, Immanence
and Imposition. In the first place, Plato’s cosmology includes

COSMOLOGIES

*55

an ultimate creator, shadowy and undefined, imposing his
design upon the Universe. Secondly, the action and reaction
of the internal constituents is — for Plato — the self-sufficient
explanation of the flux of the world: “Nothing was given
off from it, nothing entered it — there was nothing but
itself”.

We have here been examining the basic notion of the initial
cosmology which dominated the world, Pagan, Christian,
and Mahometan, before the rise of the modern period.
It was modified by Aristotle, by the Alexandrians, by the
Scholastics. But this fusion of the doctrines of Imposition and
Immanence, with adjustments this way or that way, is the
great conception which reigned supreme till the beginning of
the seventeenth century.

Section III. But Greek thought provided a rival cos¬
mology, in the shape of the Atomic theory, as adumbrated
by Democritus, systematized by Epicurus, and as finally
explained in Epic shape by Lucretius. According to Lucretius
the world is an interminable shower of atomic particles,
streaming through space, swerving, intermingling, disen¬
tangling their paths, recombining them. For this doctrine
qualitative differences are merely the statistical expression of
geometrical patterns of intermingled paths, the outcome of
swerving, combined with a finite number of diversities of
shape.

Plato and Lucretius both appeal to geometry, Plato to the
regular solids, and Lucretius to the shapes of paths, and
unspecified shapes of atoms. In this respect, their general
attitude has been sustained by modern science. It seems
necessary however for Epicurus to treat space and motion
with the metaphysical naivety exhibited later in Newton’s
Principia. Plato’s doctrine of space, as stated in the Timaeus ,
has a superior metaphysical subtlety; although the Platonic

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

!56

doctrine of a Receptacle, intrinsically devoid of any geo¬
metrical form, has some analogy to the doctrine of the 4 Void’
in Lucretius. It is probable however that if Lucretius had
possessed the penetration to explain Epicurus further, he
would have found it necessary to endow his Void with
exactly those geometrical forms which Plato denied to his
Receptacle considered in abstraction, and which Aristotle
denied to his Matter in abstraction.

Plato’s cosmology tends to a fusion of the doctrines of
Imposition and Immanence; the Atomic Theory of Epicurus
lends itself most readily to a fusion of the doctrines of
Imposition and of Description.

The reason for this distinction between the two cosmo¬
logies is that for Plato behaviour is a function of the various
characters of the things concerned — the intelligent activities
of indwelling souls, and the geometric necessities of the in¬
dwelling shapes. But for Epicurus the paths of the atoms
are derived from no necessities of their natures. It is intrinsic
to their natures that they partake of spatial relations and
are moveable. But the special path of a special atom seems
to be a fact entirely extrinsic to its nature. The modern
wave-theory of the atom sides with Plato rather than with
Democritus: Newtonian dynamics sides with Democritus
against Plato. Some passages of Lucretius surreptitiously
introduce the doctrine of immanence. What Lucretius
mainly cared about was the reign of law as opposed to the
capricious intervention of demons and gods, to be coaxed by
superstition.

As to the paths of the atoms, two views are possible. One
theory can conceive them as imposed, and imposition re¬
quires a transcendent God as imposer. This is practically
the cosmology adopted by Newton. The Newtonian forces,
whatever their ultimate mathematical formulation, are

COSMOLOGIES

*57

nothing else than the imposed conditions provided by God.
This point of view was the working formula of the eighteenth
century. God made his appearance in religion under the frigid
title of the First Cause, and was appropriately worshipped in
white-washed churches.

Another theory as to the paths can be adopted by the
Positivist School of Mere Description. For this reason, the
atomic theory, of the Lucretian type, has always been a
favourite first principle of cosmology with this School of
Thought. The paths of the molecules can be ascribed to
mere chance. They are random distributions, each path
being entirely disconnected from any other path, and each
continuation of one path being unconditioned by the earlier
portion of the same path.

Thus the world, as we know it, exhibits for our confused
perception an involution of paths and a concatenation of
circumstances which have arisen entirely by chance. We
can describe what has happened, but with that description
all possibility of knowledge ends.

Lucretius wavers between the notion of imposed law and
the notion of chance. For example: “This point too we
wish you to apprehend: when bodies are borne downwards
sheer through void by their own weights, at quite uncertain
times and uncertain spots they push themselves a little from
their course: you just and only just can call it a change of
inclination. If they were not used to swerve, they would all
fall down, like drops of rain, through the deep void, and
no clashing would have been begotten nor blow produced
among the first-beginnings [i.e. the atoms] : thus nature never
would have produced aught”.1

1 Book ii, lines 216-224. Translated by H. A. J. Monro, published separately
in Bohn’s series, by G. Bell and Sons, Ltd.: Cf. also Cyril Bailey’s translation,
Lucretius on the Nature of Things , Oxford University Press, 1929.

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

158

But he rigidly limits his suggestion of chance:1

“But lest you haply suppose that living things alone are
bound by these conditions, such a law keeps all things within
their limits.”

The objection to the extreme Positivist doctrine at once
suggests itself, that the enormous aspect of regular evolution
through vast regions embracing the remotest star-galaxies,
and through vast periods of time, is an unlikely product of
mere chance.

There are two answers to this objection. In the first place,
there is plenty of time and plenty of space. We are dealing
with all space, from infinity to infinity, we are dealing with
all time from eternity to eternity, and we are dealing with
the unbounded wealth of all existence, to be comprehended
in terms of no finite number. In any finite region of space
and time, with its finite cargo of atoms, any pre-conceived
arrangement of paths, however simple or however complex,
is equally unlikely, indeed there is an infinite probability
against it. But we are not dealing with a pre-conceived con¬
cept, we observe what in fact is the case in a limited region.
Something must be the case, and what we have observed
is what in fact has been the case. There is nothing pre¬
conceived, and thus there is no question of infinite improb¬
ability. It is true that expectations float through our minds,
but they are vague memories of what in fact has happened,
combined with suggestions as to the more detailed analysis
of past fact. The fact in the past is neither probable nor
improbable, it is what in fact took place within the ambit
of our observation.

The second answer takes the same point of view as that
derived from the doctrine of immanence. There is no need —
indeed there is not the slightest reason— to exaggerate the

1 Cf. Book n, lines 718, 719.

COSMOLOGIES

159

order in the spatio-temporal region under our observation.
In the remote regions and epochs we have only intelligence
of very general aspects of order. That is all we know. In
the present epoch we have more detail, but our observation
is rough, inaccurate, and sporadic. Again, that is all we
know. We must not ascribe, we must not expect, one step
beyond our direct knowledge. The Positivist has no foothold
on which he can rely for speculation beyond the region of
direct observation.

Section IV. The great Positivist school of thought, whose
epic is the poem of Lucretius, at the present time reigns
supreme in the domain of science. Its aim is to confine itself
to fact, with a discard of all speculation. Unfortunately,
among all the variant schools of opinion, it is the one which
can least bear confrontation with the facts. It has never been
acted on. It can never be acted on, for it gives no foothold
for any forecast of the future around which purpose can
weave itself.

But before confronting Positivism with the practice of
mankind, it is interesting to note that atomism has taken on
a new form of modern thought. Epistemology has arisen,
in its function of a critic of all pretensions to knowledge.
To-day, the question, How do we know? takes precedence of
the question — What do we know?

Again, the doctrine of atomism re-appears. The atomism
of Democritus in the science of Cosmology is replaced by
the atomism of Hume in the science of Epistemology.
Epicurus enunciates the doctrine that the ultimate elements
of the physical universe are physical atoms, showering
through space with paths associated in complexes. Hume
enunciates the doctrine that the ultimate elements, sub¬
jectively given in the activity of knowing, are the impressions
of sensation, showering through the stream of experience,

l6o ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

associated as memories, provocative of emotions and re¬
flexions, and expectations. But for Hume, each impression
is a distinct existence arising in soul from unknown causes.
Epicurus bases himself upon an epistemology closely allied
to that of Hume.

Positivism has seized on Hume’s atomism, with Hume
himself as its leader. The task of science is explained to be
merely the formulation of observed identities of pattern
persistent and recurrent in each stream of experience. But
since Hume is dealing with subjective experience, he can
add a corollary not open to the more objective doctrine of
Epicurus. Hume adds that we expect the recurrences ob¬
served in the past, also to recur in the future. At this stage,
Hotspur’s question arises in our mind, “But will they come,
when you do call for them?” To this question Hume,
following the example of Glendower, returns no answer. It
is an observed fact in the past that expected recurrences
have recurred. But Positivistic science is solely concerned
with observed fact, and must hazard no conjecture as to
the future. If observed fact be all we know, then there is
no other knowledge. Probability is relative to knowledge.
There is no probability as to the future within the doctrine
of Positivism.

Of course most men of science, and many philosophers, use
the Positivistic doctrine to avoid the necessity of considering
perplexing fundamental questions — in short, to avoid meta¬
physics — and then save the importance of science by an
implicit recurrence to their metaphysical persuasion that the
past does in fact condition the future.

Indeed, as Hume pointed out, human life cannot be
carried on without this persuasion. In this way the Positi¬
vistic doctrine of to-day bases itself on some form of atomism,
objective or subjective, and deduces that the sole occupation

COSMOLOGIES l6l

of science is to elaborate simple descriptions of things ob¬
served.

There is a curious misconception that somehow the mathe¬
matical mysteries of Statistics help Positivism to evade its
proper limitation to the observed past. But statistics tell you
nothing about the future unless you make the assumption of
the permanence of statistical form. For example, in order to
use statistics for prediction, assumptions are wanted as to the
stability of the mean, the mode, the probable error, and the
symmetry or skewness of the statistical expression of functional
correlation. Mathematics can tell you the consequences of
your beliefs. For example, if your apple is composed of a
finite number of atoms, mathematics will tell you that the
number is odd or even. But you must not ask mathematics
to provide you with the apple, the atoms, and the finiteness
of their number. There is no valid inference from mere
possibility to matter of fact, or, in other words, from mere
mathematics to concrete nature.

Section V. It is now time to confront the Positivist doc¬
trine with the facts of the History of Science. We want to
discover the type of purpose exhibited in the practices of
men of science. In order to avoid the suspicion of biased
selection, consider the last discovery, which at the time of
writing this chapter, has occupied a leading position in
American newspapers. I mean the discovery of the new
planet by the Lowell Observatory in Arizona. The final
interpretation of this discovery is irrelevant: Nature, even in
the act of satisfying anticipation, often provides a surprise.
The story is typical of the previous discovery of Neptune,
and of many discoveries of the faint members of double
stars, and of the famous empirical term in the formula for
the moon’s motion.

The recent discovery is based upon the observed devia-

1 1

wi

1 62

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

tions of the orbits of the planets Uranus and Neptune from
the calculated order. This calculation embraces the effect
produced by all the previously known bodies of the solar
system upon the motions of these two planets, assuming the
Law of Gravitation. But their observed motions deviate
slightly from their orbits as thus calculated. There is how¬
ever no difficulty in producing a mathematical formula
which describes the observed deviation. Such a formula
will be of the most elementary mathematical character. It
will consist of a few terms involving trigonometrical sines
and cosines, with certain numerical components defining
their periods, with other numerical components defining
their amplitudes, and other numerical components defining
their epochs — or in modern popular phraseology, their c zero
times’. Altogether a description of charming simplicity,
which would have delighted Plato by its exemplification of
his most daring speculations as to the future of mathematics.

Every Positivist must have been completely satisfied. A
simple description had been evolved which fitted the ob¬
served facts. They could now relapse into their unexplained
persuasion that in the future these formulae would continue
to describe the motions of Uranus and Neptune. Positivism
had exhausted its message. But astronomers were not satis¬
fied. They remembered the Law of Gravitation. Percy
Lowell calculated the direction and magnitude of the vector
component of acceleration, directed to an imaginary point
moving round the sun in an elliptic path, even more remote
than the orbit of Neptune. He succeeded in choosing his
assumed path so that the magnitude of the acceleration
varies as the inverse square of the distance between Neptune
and the moving point. A new description had been dis¬
covered, requiring some complex mathematics to connect
it with the successive positions of Uranus, but conforming

COSMOLOGIES

163

to the general form of Newton’s Law. There has been a
gain in generality, pleasing if you cherish a virtuosity in
descriptions. But we have forgotten the main interest: We
have only got to look in the sky, towards Percy Lowell’s
moving point, and we shall see a new planet. Certainly
we shall not. All that any person has seen is a few faint
dots on photographic plates, involving the intervention of
photography, excellent telescopes, elaborate apparatus, long
exposures and favourable nights. The new explanation is
now involved in the speculative extension of a welter of
physical laws, concerning telescopes, light, and photography,
laws which merely claim to register observed facts. It is in¬
volved in the speculative application of such laws to particular
circumstances within the observatories, for which circum¬
stances these laws are not concurrently verified. The result of
this maze of speculative extensions is to connect the deviations
of Uranus and Neptune with the dots on the photographic
plates.

This narrative, framed according to the strictest require¬
ments of the Positivist theory, is a travesty of the plain facts.
The civilized world has been interested at the thought of
the newly discovered planet, solitary and remote, for endless
ages circling the sun and adding its faint influence to the
tide of affairs. At last it is discovered by human reason,
penetrating into the nature of things and laying bare the
necessities of their interconnection. The speculative ex¬
tensions of laws, baseless on the Positivist theory, are the
obvious issue of speculative metaphysical trust in the material
permanences, such as telescopes, observatories, mountains,
planets, which are behaving towards each other according
to the necessities of the Universe, including theories of their
own natures. The point is, that speculative extension beyond
direct observation spells some trust in metaphysics, however

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

164

vaguely these metaphysical notions may be entertained in
explicit thought. Our metaphysical knowledge is slight,
superficial, incomplete. Thus errors creep in. But, such as
it is, metaphysical understanding guides imagination and
justifies purpose. Apart from metaphysical presupposition
there can be no civilization.

There is a moral to be drawn as to the method of science.
All scientific progress depends on first framing a formula
giving a general description of observed fact. Lowell worked
with such a formula in front of him, namely, the simple
mathematical expression for the deviations. At one stage, the
method of all discovery conforms to the Positivist doctrine.
There can be no doubt that, with this restriction of meaning,
the Positivist doctrine is correct.

Certain branches of science halt for centuries in this
stage. Then their votaries embrace the unguarded Positivist
doctrine. There is however a motive of unrest which urves

o

scientists beyond mere satisfaction with the simple descrip¬
tion, beyond even the general description. It is the desire
to obtain the explanatory description which may justify the
speculative extension of Laws, beyond actual, particular
instances of observation.

This urge towards explanatory description provides the
interplay between science and metaphysics. The doctrines
of metaphysics are modified, so as to be capable of providing
the explanation, and the explanations of science are framed in
terms of the popular metaphysics lingering in the imaginations
of these scientists.

One aspect of the history of thought from the time of
Plato to the present day is the struggle between meta¬
physicians and Positivists over the interpretation of the Laws
of Nature. The Greeks, as distinguished from the Alexan¬
drians, are to be looked on as the discoverers of ideas, rather

COSMOLOGIES

165

than their systematizers. Thus it is not surprising, that the
attitude of Plato on this topic is not as clearly defined as
the preceding quotations might imply. In some of his
Dialogues his attention is fixed on the distinction between
the eternal world of ideas, completely open to the under¬
standing, and the fluent world disclosed by the senses which
fails to participate with any exact clarity in the eternal
forms. To that extent the sensible world is closed to the
understanding. Its history is reduced to matter of fact, in¬
capable of complete rationalization. It is but a short step
from the Plato who composed the myth of the shadows on
the wall of the cave to the full Positivist doctrine of Hume
[i.e. the c Hume 5 of the Treatise ], Mill, Comte and Huxley.
The main distinction between Plato in this mood and the
Moderns — and it is a great distinction — is that the Platonic
emphasis on the eminent reality of the eternal world of
ideas must be replaced by the nominalism of most of these
moderns.

But in his later Dialogues Plato’s interest is concentrated on
cosmology; and, as the quotations show, his final judgment,
or the decay of his old age, leads him to an intermediate
position between the doctrines of Immanent Law and of
Imposed Law.

Section VI. It was Plato in his later mood who put for¬
ward the suggestion, “and I hold that the definition of
being is simply power”. This suggestion is the charter of
the doctrine of Immanent Law.

The next important landmark in the history of this doctrine
is provided by the theological Alexandrians, some four to six
hundred years later. It is customary to undervalue theology
in a secular history of philosophical thought. This is a mistake,
since for a period of about thirteen hundred years the ablest
thinkers were mostly theologians.

i66

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

The theologians of Alexandria were greatly exercised over
the immanence of God in the world. They considered the
general question, how the primordial Being, who is the
source of the inevitable recurrence of the world towards
order, shares his nature with the world. In some sense he
is a component in the natures of all fugitive things. Thus,
an understanding of the nature of temporal things involves
a comprehension of the immanence of the Eternal Being.
This doctrine effects an important reconciliation between
the doctrines of Imposed Law and Immanent Law. For,
with this doctrine, the necessity of the trend towards order
does not arise from the imposed will of a transcendent God.
It arises from the fact that the exis tents in nature are sharing
in the nature of the immanent God.

This doctrine, in any clear form, is not Platonic, though
it is a natural modification from Plato’s own doctrine. But
in the Timaeus , Plato provides a soul of this world who
definitely is not the ultimate creator. By this notion, Plato
prepared the way for the Gnostics with their fantastic
machinery of emanations, and for the Arians. In the Timaeus
the doctrine can be read as an allegory. In that case it
was Plato’s most unfortunate essay in mythology. The
World-Soul, as an emanation, has been the parent of puerile
metaphysics, which only obscures the ultimate question of
the relation of reality as permanent with reality as fluent:
the mediator must be a component in common, and not a
transcendent emanation.

The Western doctrine of Grace, derived from St Augustine,
leans heavily towards the notion of a wholly transcendent
God imposing his partial favours on the world. Indeed,
Calvin’s rigid version of the same doctrine suggests the
Manichean doctrine of a wholly evil material world par¬
tially rescued by God’s arbitrary selection. For Calvinistic

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167

thought the physical order of the world was an arbitrary
imposition of God’s will. Indeed, the Augustinian doctrine
takes on diverse aspects according as it is derived from the
will of a transcendent God, or the nature of an immanent
God.

This unquestioned belief in order, with this chequered
history — Plato and Epicurus, the Gnostics, the Alexandrian
theologians, the rationalists of Antioch and Mopsuetia, the
Manicheans, Augustine, Calvin — finally started the first
phase of the modern world in the sixteenth century with
the unquestioning presupposition that there is an order of
nature which lies open in every detail to human under¬
standing.

This belief can be traced back to the initiation of Plato
and the Jewish prophets. But, in all probability, it is more
than any of them clearly formulated or consistently believed.
Lucretius gives the clearest formulation of the doctrine of an
exact detailed order of nature. But even he has to make
everything depend upon swervings of atoms which take place
“at no fixed part of space and no fixed time”.

Section VII. The conclusion of the seventeenth century
marks a new stabilization of cosmological doctrine for the next
two hundred years. For the moment the extreme Positivistic
doctrine was eliminated. But, curiously enough, the three
great figures, Newton, Leibniz, Locke, then dominating the
world of thought, gave three diverse interpretations of the
Platonic and Lucretian problems.

Newton’s position was the more useful as a justification of
the methodology required for the state of science, then and
in the immediate future. He held the most simple-minded
version of the Lucretian doctrine of the Void, the most
simple-minded version of the Lucretian doctrine of material
atoms, and the most simple-minded version of Law imposed

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

1 68

by Divine decree. His only approach to any metaphysical
penetration arises from his way of connecting the Void with
the Sensorium of the Divine Nature. His cosmology is very
easy to understand and very hard to believe. Pragmatically
it experienced a supreme justification, for two centuries. Thus
its truth was pragmatically established, for the same period.
His doctrine will stand for all time as a clear and distinct
system of ideas, with large applications. Any cosmology must
be capable of interpreting this system and of expressing its
limitations.

The monads of Leibniz constitute another version of an
atomic doctrine of the Universe. It is true that Newton
adopted without question some of the main positions of the
Cartesian physics. But Newton was entirely innocent of
the subjectivist bias of thought introduced by Descartes.
Newton found himself knowing a lot of things, as inter¬
preted in Cartesian fashion; and he successfully introduced
a systematization of this knowledge, thus interpreted. But
Descartes, before he attacked the problem of physics, asked
the momentous questions — How do I know, and How can
I divest my knowledge of doubtful interpretation? The final
issue of this subjective train of thought after a century of
philosophizing is given by Hume’s mental atomism, already
mentioned in this chapter.

Leibniz was acutely conscious of this problem of the
criticism of knowledge. Thus he approached the problem of
cosmology from the subjective side, whereas Lucretius and
Newton approach it from the objective point of view. They
implicitly ask the question, What does the world of atoms
look like to an intellect surveying it? What would such an
intellect say about the spectacle of an atomic Universe? The
answer is contained in the Epic of Lucretius and the Principia
of Newton, immortal works.

J 4

COSMOLOGIES

l6g

But Leibniz answered another question. He explained
what it must be like to be an atom. Lucretius tells us what
an atom looks like to others, and Leibniz tells us how an
atom is feeling about itself. In this account Leibniz wrestles
with a difficulty which infects modern cosmologies, a diffi¬
culty which Plato, Aristotle, Lucretius, and Newton entirely
ignore — perhaps because they would have declared it to be
founded upon a mistake. Descartes, as is usual with the
founders of new schools of thought, exactly balanced himself
between the old way and the new way of which he was the
founder. The modern outlook arises from the slow influence
of Aristotle’s Logic, during a period of two thousand years.
Also Aristotle’s Logic is founded upon an analysis of the
simplest form of a verbal sentence. For example, the
sentence ‘This water is hot’ attributes the character of high
temperature to the particular mass of water in the particular
bath-tub. The quality of ‘being hot’ is an abstraction.
Many different things can be hot, and we can think of
being hot without thinking of any particular thing in a
bath-tub which is hot. But in the real physical world, the
quality of ‘being hot’ can only appear as a characteristic of
concrete things which are hot.

Again, still keeping to the point of view derived from
Aristotelian Logic, if we ask for a complete account of a real
particular thing in the physical world, the adequate answer
is expressed in terms of a set of these abstract characteristics,
which are united into an individualized togetherness which
is the real thing in question.

This answer is beautifully simple. But it entirely leaves
out of account the interconnections between real things.
Each substantial thing is thus conceived as complete in
itself, without any reference to any other substantial thing.
Such an account of the ultimate atoms, or of the ultimate

170

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

monads, or of the ultimate subjects enjoying experience,
renders an interconnected world of real individuals un¬
intelligible. The universe is shivered into a multitude of
disconnected substantial things, each thing in its own way
exemplifying its private bundle of abstract characters which
have found a common home in its own substantial indi¬
viduality. But substantial thing cannot call unto substantial
thing. A substantial thing can acquire a quality, a credit —
but real landed estate, never. In this way, Aristotle’s doc¬
trines of Predication and of Primary Substance have issued
into a doctrine of the conjunction of attributes and of the
disjunction of primary substances.

All modern epistemologies, all modern cosmologies, wrestle
with this problem. There is, for their doctrine, a mysterious
reality in the background, intrinsically unknowable by any
direct intercourse. In the foreground of direct enjoyment,
there is the play and interplay of various qualities diversifying
the surface of the substantial unity of the solitary individual
in question.

But one characteristic of each experiencing subject is a
mysterious impulse to interpret its private world of enjoyed
qualifications as indicating and symbolically defining a
complex of communication between ultimate realities. Yet,
according to the doctrine of these modern cosmologies, the
how, or the why, of such communication must for ever lie
beyond reason : for reason can only discern the set of qualities
constituting the nature of an individual substance.

Such has been the long slow influence of Aristotelian
Logic upon cosmological theory. Leibniz was the first, and
by far the greatest philosopher, who both accepted the
modern doctrine and frankly faced its difficulty. He boldly
excepted God from the scope of the doctrine. God and each
individual monad were in communication. Thus there is,

COSMOLOGIES

171

on his doctrine, an indirect communication between monads
by the mediation of God. But each monad independently
develops its own experience according to its character which
is imposed on it aboriginally by communication with God.
This Leibnizian doctrine of Law by pre-established harmony
is an extreme example of the doctrine of imposition, capable
in some ways of being mitigated by the notion of the imman¬
ence of God. But no reason can be given why the supreme
monad, God, is exempted for the common fate of isolation.
Monads, according to this doctrine, are windowless for each
other. Why have they windows towards God, and Why has
God windows towards them?

It is interesting to enquire how the ancient cosmologists —
Plato and Lucretius — evaded this difficulty.

In the first place it must be acknowledged that in Plato’s
Dialogues many unguarded statements, and many trains of
thought, can be found which in themselves would lead
straight to the modern difficulty. In fact, in this respect
Aristotle’s Logic can be found in germ in Plato. But in the
ancient cosmologies, including Aristotle’s own doctrine of
matter, another train of thought can be found, which is in
fact an emphatic doctrine of real communication. Plato’s
doctrine of the real Receptacle [uttoSo^ and x°Va] ? and
Epicurus’ doctrine of the real Void [to Kevov ], differ in
some details. But both doctrines are emphatic assertions of a
real communication between ultimate realities. This com¬
munication is not accidental. It is part of the essential nature
of each physical actuality that it is itself an element quali¬
fying the Receptacle, and that the qualifications of the Re¬
ceptacle enter into its own nature. In itself, with the various
actualities abstracted from it, the Receptacle participates in
no forms, according to Plato. But he designates it as The
foster-mother of all becoming ’. Later in the same Dialogue he

172

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

calls it ca natural matrix for all things’. It receives its forms
by reason of its inclusion of actualities, and in a way not to
be abstracted from those actualities. The Receptacle, as dis¬
cussed in the Timaeus , is the way in which Plato conceived
the many actualities of the physical world as components in
each other’s natures. It is the doctrine of the immanence of
Law, derived from the mutual immanence of actualities. It is
Plato’s doctrine of the medium of intercommunication.1

Thus finally we can understand that the Receptacle, ac¬
cording to Plato, the Void, according to Lucretius, and God,
according to Leibniz, play the same part in cosmological
theory. Also in his general scholium, Newton definitely con¬
nects the Lucretian Void with the Leibnizian God. For he
calls Empty space the ‘sensorium of God’. We have here a
formidable display of men of diverse genius, Plato and
Aristotle, Epicurus and Lucretius, Newton and Leibniz.
The modern cosmologies are all detailed variations of the
great types which we have discussed. They revolve round
the diverse notions of Law, the diverse notions of the com¬
munication between real individuals, the diverse notions of
the mediating basis in virtue of which such communication
is attained. One other problem, derivative from these general
principles, but of major importance for human life is the
doctrine of the status of the spirit of man in the scheme of
things.

This more special problem of cosmological theory was the
theme of the former part of this book. Its important in-

1 On this topic, it is interesting to note the extreme difficulty of determining,
whether or no Descartes held to the doctrine of one individual corporeal substance
with many modal diversities of motion, or to the doctrine of many diverse indi¬
vidual coporeal substances essentially connected by extensive relations. Almost
all his phrases are ambiguous on this point, with the exception of Principle LX,
Part 1, of his Principles of Philosophy. Here he unambiguously speaks of every
corporeal substance , thus — at least in this place — deciding for a multiplicity of such
substances. Either alternative leads him into difficulties.

COSMOLOGIES

*73

fluence upon the course of human history was illustrated.
But it must not be thought that the more general problem
of cosmology lies outside the scope of practical interest. The
directions of human activities in various epochs, and the
clashings of such directions in the same epoch, are the
outcome of rough and ready solutions of the problem of
cosmology, popularized throughout masses of mankind.
Millions of men have marched to battle fiercely nerved by
intense faith in Law imposed by the will of inflexible Allah,
Law sharing out to each human his inevitable fate, Law
sharing out to each faithful Mahometan either victory, or
death and Paradise. Millions of Buddhists have shunned the
intrinsic evils of such fierce Mahometan emotion relying on
the impersonal immanence of Law, made clear to them by
the doctrines of the Buddha. Millions of humans have shaped
their lives according to the compromise between these two
doctrines due to the Platonism of Christianity.

Finally, the restless modern search for increased ac¬
curacy of observation and for increased detailed explanation
is based upon unquestioning faith in the reign of Law.
Apart from such faith, the enterprise of science is foolish,
hopeless.

Section VIII. The most recent of the four doctrines of
the Laws of Nature still remains for discussion — -The Doc¬
trine of Conventional Interpretation. This doctrine certainly
expresses the procedure by which free speculation passes
into an interpretation of Nature. We elaborate a system of
ideas, in detachment from any direct, detailed observation of
matter of fact. For example, such detachment from detailed
observation seems, on the surface, to be characteristic of
Plato’s Dialogues. They do not bear the aspect of patient in¬
duction from the facts. They are dominated by speculation
and dialectics. Also Mathematics has developed, especially in

174

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

recent years, by a speculative interest in types of order,
without any determination of particular entities illustrative
of those types. But Nature has subsequently been interpreted
in terms of such mathematical laws. The conclusion seems to
be, that Nature is patient of interpretation in terms of Laws
which happen to interest us.

Yet another consideration supports this point of view.
There is an element of arbitrary choice in our interpretation
of the geometrical character of the physical world. Mathe¬
maticians have proved that any region which exemplifies
metrical geometry of the Euclidean type, also exemplifies
metrical geometry of the Elliptic type, and also metrical
geometry of the Hyperbolic type. Further, if we start with
any one of the three types, we can prove that both the re¬
maining types are severally exemplified in the same subject-
matter.

But it is an entire misconception, which has been enter¬
tained even by some mathematicians, to deduce that this
mathematical truth has any bearing upon the notion of the
Laws of Nature as arbitrary convention. For in the three
metrical geometries as applying to the same subject-matter,
the definitions of distance are different. Thus mathematicians
have proved that if there be a metrical geometry of the
Euclidean type, then with another definition of distance,
and hence with another definition of congruence, there is a
metrical geometry of the Elliptic type also applying to the
same subject-matter. There are three diverse systems of
relationship within the subject-matter, so related that if one
be present then the others are present. Also, of course, the
description of one set of relationships can be achieved, though
very clumsily, in terms of any one of the other two sets.
There is nothing ‘conventional’ in this, except the obvious
fact that we can direct attention to any selected group

COSMOLOGIES

175

of facts. Of course the question remains, What set of geo¬
metrical relationships are we referring to, when we say that
we have walked thirty miles and are tired? Are they thirty
Euclidean miles, or thirty Elliptic miles, or thirty Hyperbolic
miles? Here the standard of reference can be the same in
both cases, namely, the interval between two assigned marks
fixed securely in Washington, D.C.

Again there is yet another geometrical ambiguity. For
keeping to the same type of geometry — Euclidean, say, but
either of the other two would serve equally well — keeping
to Euclidean geometry, there are an infinite number of
different alternative ways of defining distance so as to
produce alternative systems of Euclidean geometry. Thus
granting that one Euclidean system holds, an infinite number
of other Euclidean systems also hold. Thus when a friend says
that he has motored a hundred miles to see us, we should
enquire what particular geometrical system of metrics he
has adopted. And he had not settled the question by merely
answering Euclidean. Also the differences are not neces¬
sarily slight. A thousand miles between particular towns on
one system may be two miles on another system. It follows
that every legislature should anxiously settle the metric system
that it means to adopt. This question has nothing to do
with the difference between miles and kilometres, or with
mere imperfections of measurement. That is a much slighter
point.

It is fairly obvious that, apart from minor inaccuracies of
perception, we all do in fact adopt the same system. It is
a fact of nature that a distance of thirty miles is a long
walk for anyone. There is no convention about that. Thus
the appeal to geometry can be dismissed when we are dis¬
cussing the question of the conventionality of the Laws of
Nature.

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

176

Section IX. But the analogy of Geometry suggests an
important reflection. It is well known that Geometry can
be developed without any reference to measurement — and
thus without any reference to distance, and without any
reference to numerical co-ordinates for the indication of
points. Geometry, developed in this fashion, has been termed
‘ Non-metrical Projective Geometry’. Elsewhere1 2 I have
termed it ‘the science of cross-classification’. Aristotle’s
science of classification into genera, and species, and sub¬
species, is the science of mutually exclusive classification. It
develops Plato’s suggestion of a science of ‘Division’.

Projective Geometry is only one example of a science of
cross-classification. Other such sciences have not been de¬
veloped, partly because no obvious applications have obtruded
themselves, and partly because the abstract interest of such
sciences have not engaged the interest of any large group
of mathematicians. For example, in Principia Mathematical
Section 93, ‘On the Inductive Analysis of the Field of a
Relation’, is a suggestion for another science of that type.
Indeed, the whole of Vol. 1 is devoted to the initiation of
non-numerical quasi-geometrical sciences, together with a
technique for their elaboration. The subsequent parts of the
book specialize on those more special mathematical sciences
which involve number and quantity.

This reference to Principia Mathematica has been made to
remind ourselves that numerical relations derived from
measurements constitute the subject-matter of a very special
development of mathematics. This development has as yet
constituted the only really important part of mathematics,
except for the impressive disclosure of the extent to which

1 The Axioms of Projective Geometry, Cambridge Tracts in Mathematics, No. 4,
Cambridge University Press, 1906. The reference is to Chapter 1, Section 3.

2 Cambridge University Press, 1910.

COSMOLOGIES 1 77

ordinary Geometry is independent of measurement and
number.

It follows that there are an indefinite number of purely
abstract sciences, with their laws, their regularities, and their
complexities of theorems — all as yet undeveloped. We can
hardly avoid the conclusion that Nature in her procedures
illustrates many such sciences. We are blind to such illustra¬
tion because we are ignorant of the type of regularities to look
for. In such cases, we may dimly sense a sort of familiarity
attached to novel circumstances, without any notion how to
proceed in the analysis of the vague feeling.

There is thus a certain amount of convention as to the
emergence into human consciousness of sorts of Laws of
Nature. The order of emergence depends upon the abstract
sciences which civilized mankind have in fact chosen to
develop.

But such ‘convention’ should not be twisted to mean that
any facts of nature can be interpreted as illustrating any laws
that we like to assign.

Section X. This discussion of the possible variety of types
of Laws of Nature draws attention to a three-fold distinction
which it is important to keep in mind during philosophic
discussion. There are: (i) our direct intuitions which we
enjoy prior to all verbalization: (ii) our literary modes of
verbal expression of such intuitions, together with the dialectic
deductions from such verbal formulae: (iii) the set of purely
deductive sciences, which have been developed so that the
network of possible relations with which they deal are familiar
in civilized consciousness.

The sciences under the heading (iii) direct attention for
the exploration of the recesses of experience, and also assist
in providing the verbal formulae belonging to the heading
(ii). The chief danger in philosophy is that the dialectic

wi

12

178 ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

deductions from inadequate formulae should exclude direct
intuitions from explicit attentions. In fact the abstract
sciences tend to correct the evil effects of the inadequacy of
language, and the consequent dangers of a logic which pre¬
supposes linguistic adequacy.

CHAPTER IX

SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY

Section I. In one sense, Science and Philosophy are
merely different aspects of one great enterprise of the
human mind. We will dwell upon their co-operation in
the task of raising humanity above the general level of
animal life. At this low, animal level, flashes of aesthetic
insight, of technological attainment, of sociological organiza¬
tion, of affectionate feeling, display themselves. Nightingales,
beavers, ants, the kindly nurture of the young, all witness
to the existence of this level of life in the animal world.
Of course all these modes of functioning are carried to
an immeasurably higher level among mankind. In human
beings these various modes of functioning exhibit more
variety of adaptation to special circumstances, they are more
complex, and they are more interwoven with each other.
But without question, among animals they are there, plainly
demonstrated to our observation.

Among living things on this planet, so far as direct evidence
reaches, Science and Philosophy belong to men alone. They
are both concerned with the understanding of individual
facts as illustrations of general principles. The principles are
understood in the abstract, and the facts are understood in
respect to their embodiment of the principles.

For example, animals seem quite familiar with the habit
of bodies to fall down. They show no surprise at such an
occurrence, and they often knock things over. But quite

12-2

i8o

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

early in the history of modern European science we find
Aristotle formulating the law that there is a tendency for
material bodies to seek the centre of the Earth. This law
was almost certainly not a discovery of Aristotle’s. It was
a reigning commonplace of Greek thought, although not
accepted unanimously. But it is plainly set forth in his
writings, and it is beside our point to indulge further in
archaeological conjectures. This scientific law seems rather
antiquated to us, and in fact not quite true. It is over special,
and yet requires severe limitation before the quantitative
measurements bear out its statements with any exactness. We
shall find that the subsequent history of this law and of its
successive modifications throws great light upon the relative
functions of Science and Philosophy.

But let us first examine Aristotle’s Law, which is one of
the earlier doctrines of that Western Science whose history
stretches from Thales of Miletus, alive at the date 600 b.c.,
to the present day. Roughly speaking, it is a history of about
twenty-five hundred years. Of course there were anticipa¬
tions in Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, and China. But modern
science, urged onward by the curiosity of the human spirit,
permeated with criticism, and divorced from hereditary
superstitions, had its birth with the Greeks; and among the
Greeks Thales was the earliest exponent known to us.

In this general characterization science and philosophy
are not discriminated. But the word ‘curiosity’ somewhat
trivializes that inward motive which has driven men. In the
greater sense, in which it is here used, ‘curiosity’ means the
craving of reason that the facts discriminated in experience
be understood. It means the refusal to be satisfied with the
bare welter of fact, or even with the bare habit of routine.
The first step in science and philosophy has been made
when it is grasped that every routine exemplifies a principle

SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 1 8 1

which is capable of statement in abstraction from its par¬
ticular exemplifications. The curiosity, which is the gadfly
driving civilization from its ancient safeties, is this desire to
state the principles in their abstraction. In this curiosity
there is a ruthless element which in the end disturbs. We
are American, or French, or English; and we love our modes
of life, with their beauties and tendernesses. But curiosity
drives us to an attempt to define civilization; and in this
generalization we soon find that we have lost our beloved
America, our beloved France, and our beloved England.
The generality stands with a cold impartiality, where our
affections cling to one or other of the particulars.

An examination of Aristotle’s Law of Gravitation exem¬
plifies this abstractive process inherent in science. The Law
involves a classification of the things around us. There are
the heavy bodies with the property of tending downwards,
and there are the other elements such as flames, with the
intrinsic nature that they tend upwards though they are
component things on the earth’s surface. These upward
moving things tend to their proper place which is the
heavens. The stars and planets form yet a third class of
things which by their own nature are in the heavens, things
which are ingenerable and incorruptible. In this classification
of the components of physical nature yet a fourth component
remains over, in its character unique and thus the only
member of its class. This component is the Earth, the centre
of the Universe, by reference to which all these other types
of being are defined.

In this classification of the various components of
physical nature Aristotle has given to Science and Philo¬
sophy its first sweeping analysis of the facts of physical
nature. You will notice that the classification proceeds
entirely by reference to function, quite in the modern

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

l82

spirit. In the place of an uninterpreted swamp, pestilential
with mystery and magic, he sets before our understanding
a majestic, co-ordinated scheme, lucid to the understanding
and based upon the obvious, persistent facts of our ex¬
perience. In the generality of its scope, it is equally philo¬
sophic and scientific, and later on it provided the physical
background for the Christian scheme of salvation. Its
overthrow, eighteen hundred years later, was resisted equally
by Luther and the Church of Rome. As an example
of a majestic inductive generalization, appealing to the
obvious facts, and neglecting the welter of minor differences,
Aristotle’s general conception of the physical universe remains
unsurpassed. For every feature in it, there is an appeal to
observation; and for every observation to which appeal is
made, there is the possibility of its indefinite repetition. With
Aristotle and Epicurus, the science of modern civilization
reached adolescence.

Section II. There is a clear-cut obviousness about Aristotle’s
doctrines which is entirely lacking to Plato’s cosmology. Of
course neither Plato, nor Aristotle, originated his own par¬
ticular line of thought. There was a history behind them
of three or four generations of thinkers, back to the dim
figures of Thales and Pythagoras, and even beyond them.
Also Aristotle worked for twenty years in the Academy of
Plato, and derived ideas from that active, speculative group
of thinkers, to whom the modern world owes its speculation,
its criticism, its deductive and inductive sciences, and the
civilization of its religious concepts. They were the narrow
channel through which passed the confused traditions of
Egypt, Mesopotamia, Syria, and of the sea-borne Greek civili¬
zation. From this Academy and its Aristotelian off-shoot,
there emerged the various lines of thought which the sub¬
sequent schools of Alexandria turned into the .first phase of

SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 183

modern science, natural and humane. Undoubtedly the
world then lost picturesqueness. For prophets were super¬
seded by professors. In other words, as the movement has
penetrated into habits of thought, intuitive conviction has
wilted in the face of criticism. But amid all the limitations
of humanity, wandering dazed in the abundant universe,
knowledge has re-conditioned human life, and has made pos¬
sible that virtue which requires such measure of intellectual
analysis.

Between them, Plato and Aristotle succeed in illustrating
the chief connections between science and philosophy. The
emphasis of science is upon observation of particular occur¬
rences, and upon inductive generalizations, issuing in wide
classifications of things according to their modes of func¬
tioning, in other words according to the laws of nature
which they illustrate. The emphasis of philosophy is upon
generalizations which almost fail to classify by reason of
their universal application. For example, all things are in¬
volved in the creative advance of the Universe, that is, in
the general temporality which affects all things, even if at
all times they remain self-identical. Thus the consideration
of time does not lead to classification in the same direct way
in which the consideration of weight led Aristotle to his
four-fold classification.

Now Plato had already emphasized the importance of this
Aristotelian notion of classification, that is to say, of ‘division’
as he called it. Perhaps indeed he invented the method.
It would have been quite in accordance with his clear-cut
intellectual subtlety to have done so. We find in his dialogues
the first explicit formulations of the science of Logic. But
his applications of the method are feeble in the extreme,
from the point of view of the advancement of natural
science. Whereas Aristotle in his life’s work seized upon

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

184

the general notion of classification, he gave a masterly
analysis of the complexities inherent in the mutual relation
of classes. He also applied his theoretical doctrine to the
immense material to be collected by direct observation in
the fields of zoology, physics, sociology. Indeed, we must
trace to him nearly all our special sciences, both the natural
sciences, and those concerning the activities of the spirit of
mankind. He is the origin of the striving towards an accurate
analysis of each given situation which in the end has created
modern European Science. We can see in the labours of his
life the first clear example of a philosophic intuition passing
into a scientific method.

Section III. This transition from philosophic intuitions to
scientific methods is in fact the whole topic of this chapter.
A philosophic system, viewed as an attempt to co-ordinate
all such intuitions, is rarely of any direct importance for
particular sciences. Each such science in tracing its ideas
backward to their basic notions stops at a half-way house. It
finds a resting place amid notions which for its immediate
purposes and for its immediate methods it need not analyse
any further. These basic notions are a specialization from
the philosophic intuitions which form the background of
the civilized thought of the epoch in question. They are
intuitions which, apart from their use in science, ordinary
language rarely expresses in any defined accuracy, but habit¬
ually presupposes in its current words and expressions. For
example, the words Tables’, ‘chairs’, ‘rocks’, presuppose the
scientific notion of material bodies, which has governed
natural science from the seventeenth century to the end of
the nineteenth.

But, even from the point of view of the special sciences,
philosophic systems, with their ambitious aims at full com¬
prehensiveness, are not useless. They are the way in which

SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 185

the human spirit cultivates its deeper intuitions. Such
systems give life and motion to detached thoughts. Apart
from these efforts at co-ordination, detached thoughts would
flash out in idle moments, illuminate a passing phase of
reflection, and would then perish and be forgotten. The
scope of an intuition can only be defined by its co-ordination
with other notions of equal generality. Even the discordance
of competing philosophic systems is a factor essential for
progress. The history of European thought, even to the
present day, has been tainted by a fatal misunderstanding.
It may be termed The Dogmatic Fallacy. The error consists
in the persuasion that we are capable of producing notions
which are adequately defined in respect to the complexity of
relationship required for their illustration in the real world.
Canst thou by searching describe the Universe? Except per¬
haps for the simpler notions of arithmetic, even our more
familiar ideas, seemingly obvious, are infected with this in¬
curable vagueness. Our right understanding of the methods
of intellectual progress depends on keeping in mind this
characteristic of our thoughts. The notions employed in
every systematic topic require enlightenment from the per¬
spective of every standpoint. They must be criticized from
the standpoint of their own internal consistency within that
topic, and from the standpoint of other topics of analogous
generality, and from the standpoint of so-called philosophic
topics with a wider range. During the mediaeval epoch in
Europe, the theologians were the chief sinners in respect to
dogmatic finality. During the last three centuries, their bad
pre-eminence in this habit passed to the men of science. Our
task is to understand how in fact the human mind can suc¬
cessfully set to work for the gradual definition of its habitual
ideas. It is a step by step process, achieving no triumphs of
finality. We cannot produce that final adjustment of well-

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

1 86

defined generalities which constitute a complete metaphysics. •
But we can produce a variety of partial systems of limited
generality. The concordance of ideas within any one such
system shows the scope and virility of the basic notions of
that scheme of thought. Also the discordance of system
with system, and success of each system as a partial mode of
illumination, warns us of the limitations within which our
intuitions are hedged. These undiscovered limitations are the
topics for philosophic research.

This doctrine of the limitations to which our best ideas are
subject is illustrated by that very notion of material bodies
which has just been mentioned. That notion is so obvious
that it has haunted language so far as we can trace history
backwards. Finally in the seventeenth century it was given
a new precision for the purposes of physical science. Also
physical science, thus re-conditioned, proved an overwhelming
success for three centuries. It has transformed thought, and
has transformed the physical activities of mankind. It seemed
that at last mankind had achieved the fundamental notion
for all practical purposes, and that beyond it in the way
of generality there lay mere aimless speculation. But in
the twentieth century this great notion, as shaped for use
by Galileo and Newton, has completely collapsed so far as
concerns its use as a fundamental notion for physical science.
In the modern science, it is a limited notion confined to
special purposes.

This collapse of nineteenth-century dogmatism is a warn¬
ing that the special sciences require that the imaginations
of men be stored with imaginative possibilities as yet un¬
utilized in the service of scientific explanation. The nearest
analogy is to be seen in the history of some species of animal,
or plant, or microbe, which lurks for ages as an obscure

SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY ' 1 87

by-product of nature in some lonely jungle, or morass, or
island. Then by some trick of circumstance it escapes into
the outer world and transforms a civilization, or destroys an
empire or the forests of a continent. Such is the potential
power of the ideas which live in the various systems of
philosophy.

Of course in this action, and reaction, between science and
philosophy either helps the other. It is the task of philo¬
sophy to work at the concordance of ideas conceived as
illustrated in the concrete facts of the real world. It seeks
those generalities which characterize the complete reality
of fact, and apart from which any fact must sink into an
abstraction. But science makes the abstraction, and is content
to understand the complete fact in respect to only some
of its essential aspects. Science and Philosophy mutually
criticize each other, and provide imaginative material for
each other. A philosophic system should present an elucida¬
tion of concrete fact from which the sciences abstract. Also
the sciences should find their principles in the concrete facts
which a philosophic system presents. The history of thought
is the story of the measure of failure and success in this joint
enterprise.

Section IV. Plato’s contribution to the basic notions con¬
necting Science and Philosophy, as finally settled in the later
portion of his life, has virtues entirely different from that of
Aristotle, although of equal use for the progress of thought.
It is to be found by reading together the Theaetetus , the
Sophist , the Timaeus , and the fifth and tenth books of the
Laws', and then by recurrence to his earlier work, the
Symposium. He is never entirely self-consistent, and rarely ex¬
plicit and devoid of ambiguity. He feels the difficulties, and
expresses his perplexities. No one could be perplexed over

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

1 88

Aristotle’s classifications; whereas Plato moves about amid
a fragmentary system like a man dazed by his own pene¬
tration.

A few main doctrines stand out and they are of priceless
importance for science, in the largest sense of that term. As
to their co-ordination into a system, he is undogmatic and
can only tell ‘the most likely tale’. Indeed, in his seventh
Epistle1 he denounces the notion that a final system can be
verbally expressed. His later thought circles round the inter¬
weaving of seven main notions namely, The Ideas, The
Physical Elements, The Psyche, The Eros, The Harmony,
The Mathematical Relations, The Receptacle. These notions
are as important for us now, as they were then at the dawn
of the modern world, when civilizations of the old type
were dying. From their point of view the Athenians were
right to condemn Socrates. After the coalescence of Greek
and Semitic thought the old order of life was doomed.
Western Civilization acquired a new intellectuality, clarified,
humanized, moralized.

Considering the Ideas by themselves, Plato points out that
any selections are either compatible for joint exemplification,
or are incompatible. It thus follows, as he notes, that the
determinations of compatibilities and incompatibilities are
the key to coherent thought, and to the understanding of the
world in its function as the theatre for the temporal realization
of ideas. The Aristotelian Logic is only a specialized derivative
from this general notion.

Plato then passes on to the agency whereby ideas obtain
efficiency in the creative advance. As he conceives them in
abstraction, he finds ideas to be static, frozen, and lifeless.
They obtain ‘life and motion’ by their entertainment in a
living intelligence. Such a living intelligence with its ‘gaze

1 Cf. 341, G.

SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 189

fixed upon ideas’ was what Plato termed a Psyche, a word
we can translate as ‘soul’. We must, however, be careful to
divest the associations of the English word from the accretions
due to centuries of Christianity. He conceives of a basic
Psyche whose active grasp of ideas conditions impartially
the whole process of the Universe. This is the Supreme
Craftsman, on whom depends that degree of orderliness
which the world exhibits. There is a perfection in this Psyche,
which Plato finds out of his power to explain. There are
also finite souls of varying grades, including human souls,
all playing their part in conditioning nature by the inherent
persuasiveness of ideas.

But the notion of mere knowledge, that is to say, of mere
understanding, is quite alien to Plato’s thought. The age
of professors had not yet arrived. In his view, the enter¬
tainment of ideas is intrinsically associated with an inward
ferment, an activity of subjective feeling, which is at once
immediate enjoyment, and also an appetition which melts
into action. This is Plato’s Eros, which he sublimates into
the notion of the soul in the enjoyment of its creative
function, arising from its entertainment of ideas. The word
Eros means ‘Love’, and in the Symposium Plato gradually
elicits his final conception of the urge towards ideal per¬
fection. It is obvious that he should have written a com¬
panion dialogue which might have been named The
Furies, dwelling on the horrors lurking within imperfect
realization.

Plato, although he neglected to write this missing dia¬
logue, did not overlook the confusion and disorder in
Nature. He expressly denies omnipotence to his Supreme
Craftsman. The influence of the entertainment of ideas is
always persuasive, and can only produce such order as is
possible. However, on this point he wavers, and sometimes

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

190

writes as if the Craftsman were disposing the world according
to his supreme will.

This notion of an excellence, partly attained and partly
missed, raises another problem which greatly exercised
Greek thought at the time of Plato. The problem can
take many special forms. In what does beauty consist, for
example, the beauty of a musical melody, the beauty of a
statue, or of a building such as the Parthenon? Also, there
is that other form of beauty, which is rightness of conduct.
Probably, in this naive shape, the question has no answer;
since ‘The Good’ is an ultimate qualification not to be
analysed in terms of any things more final than itself. But
an analogous question can be asked, to which Greek thought
was unanimous as to its answer. To what sort of things
does the concept apply, and in particular what sort of con¬
ditions are requisite for its evocation? The Greek answer
to this latter pair of questions was that beauty belonged
to composite things, and that the composition is beautiful
when the many components have obtained in some sense
their proper proportions. This was the Greek doctrine of
Harmony, in respect to which neither Plato nor Aristotle
ever waver.

In respect to Harmony, the Greeks made a discovery
which is a landmark in the history of thought. They found
out that exact Mathematical Relationships, as they exist in
Geometry and in the numerical proportions of measure¬
ments, are realized in various outstanding examples of
beautiful composition. For instance, Archytas discovered
that, other circumstances being equal, the note given out by
a stretched string depends on the length of the string, and that
beautiful compositions of notes correspond to certain simple
laws as to the proportional lengths of the strings. Also they
investigated the dependence of the beauty of architecture

SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY igi

upon the preservation of the proper proportions in the
various dimensions. This was an immense discovery, the
dependence of the qualitative elements in the world upon
mathematical relations. The facts had gradually accumu¬
lated through thousands of years. The early Babylonians
knew that the qualitative fact of the succession of seasons
depended upon the lapse of definite numbers of days. In
fact, they constructed very creditable calendars. But the
Greeks, with their power of generalization, grasped the full
law of the interweaving of qualitative fact with geometrical
and quantitative composition. They had the genius to be
astonished.

Plato drew the conclusion that the key to the under¬
standing of the natural world, and in particular of the
physical elements, was the study of mathematics. There is
good reason to believe that the greater part of the studies
of his Academy was devoted to mathematics. The mathe¬
maticians of the succeeding generation, and indeed of the
next two hundred years, ending with the astronomers
Ptolemy and Hipparchus, are the product of the systematic
tradition shaped by the example and the doctrine of Plato.
Of course the Academy inherited the Pythagorean tradition
of Mathematics.

Thus with Plato and Aristotle, a new epoch commences.
Science acquires the cleansing of logical and mathematical
lucidity. Aristotle established the importance of scientific
classification into species and genera; Plato divined the
future scope of applied mathematics. Unfortunately, later
on, the explicit development of Plato’s doctrines has been
exclusively in the hands of religious mystics, of literary
scholars, and of literary artists. Plato, the mathematician,
for long intervals disappeared from the explicit Platonic
tradition.

192

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

The notions of Harmony and of Mathematical Relations
are only special exemplifications of a yet more general
philosophic concept, namely, that of the general inter¬
connectedness of things, which transforms the manifoldness
of the many into the unity of the one. We speak in the
singular of the Universe, of Nature, of (f)vais, which can be
translated as Process. There is the one all-embracing fa.ct
which is the advancing history of the one Universe. This
community of the world, which is the matrix for all be¬
getting, and whose essence is process with retention of
connectedness — this community is what Plato terms The
Receptacle [in roSox^]. In our effort to divine his meaning,
we must remember that Plato says that it is an obscure and
difficult concept, and that in its own essence the Receptacle
is devoid of all forms. It is thus certainly not the ordinary
geometrical space with its mathematical relations. Plato calls
his Receptacle, ‘The foster-mother of all becoming’. He
evidently conceived it as a necessary notion without which
our analysis of Nature is defective. It is dangerous to neglect
Plato’s intuitions. He carefully varies his phrases in referring
to it, and implies that what he says is to be taken in its most
abstract sense. The Receptacle imposes a common relation¬
ship on all that happens, but does not impose what that
relationship shall be. It seems to be a somewhat more subtle
notion than Aristotle’s ‘matter’ which, of course, is not the
‘matter’ of Galileo and Newton. Plato’s Receptacle may be
conceived as the necessary community within which the
course of history is set, in abstraction from all the particular
historical facts. I have directed attention to Plato’s doctrine
of the Receptacle because, at the present moment, physical
science is nearer to it than at any period since Plato’s death.
The space-time of modern mathematical physics, conceived
in abstraction from the particular mathematical formulae

4

SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY

193

which applies to the happenings in it, is almost exactly Plato’s
Receptacle. It is to be noted that mathematical physicists
are extremely uncertain as to what these formulae are exactly,
nor do they believe that any such formulae can be derived
from the mere notion of space-time. Thus, as Plato declares,
space-time in itself is bare of all forms.

Section V. In the preceding sketch only one incidental
generalization, selected from one topic comprised in the
enormous labours of Aristotle’s life, has been brought
forward. Aristotle was at once a man of science, a philo¬
sopher, a literary critic, and a student of political theory.
This particular classification of the things constitutive of
the visible universe has been dwelt upon because it is an
almost perfect example of a scientific induction satisfying
all the conditions insisted on by the modern philosophy
of science. It was a generalization from observed fact,
and could be confirmed by repeated observation. In its
day — and its day lasted for eighteen hundred years — it
was extremely useful; and now that it is dead, it is stone-
dead, an archaeological curiosity. This is the fate of scientific
generalizations, so long as they are considered in relation to
their strict scientific purpose. Towards the end of its long
life, the doctrine lost its utility and turned into an obstructive
agency.

The Platonic group of notions which have been con¬
sidered have none of the merits of the Aristotelian set. In
fact, they are philosophic, and in the narrow sense are not
scientific. They suggest no detailed observation. Indeed it
has always been a reproach to Plato that he diverted interest
from observation of the particular facts. So far as concerns
political theory, and in particular jurisprudence, this ac¬
cusation is certainly untrue, and arises from the habit of
concentrating interest on his Dialogues in proportion to their

13

wi

194

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

literary brilliance. Nevertheless the assertion is undoubtedly
true in respect to physical science. But Plato had another
message. Where Aristotle said ‘observe5 and ‘classify5, the
moral of Plato’s teaching is the importance of the study of
mathematics. Of course, neither of them was so stupid as to
dissuade from observation or, on the other hand, to deny the
utility of mathematics. Probably Aristotle thought that the
mathematical knowledge of his day was about as much as
was wanted for the purposes of physical science. Any further
progress could only minister to an unpractical curiosity about
subtle abstractions.

An intense belief that a knowledge of mathematical re¬
lations would prove the key to unlock the mysteries of the
relatedness within Nature was ever at the back of Plato’s
cosmological speculations. In one passage he reprobates the
swinish1 ignorance of those who have failed to study the
doctrine of proportions incapable of expression as numerical
ratios. He evidently feels that the chance of some subtle
elucidation of the nature of Harmony is being crassly lost.
His own speculations as to the course of nature are all
founded upon the conjectural application of some mathe¬
matical construction. So far as I can remember, in every
case he made a sensible shot which, in fact, went wide of
the mark.

Although the Timaeus was widely influential, yet for about
eighteen hundred years after their epoch, it seemed that
Aristotle was right and Plato wrong. Some mathematical
formulae were interwoven with scientific ideas, but no more
than would have been perfectly familiar to Aristotle apart
from what were in his day the latest refinements. The
cosmological scheme of the active scientists was in fact that
of Aristotle. But Plato’s divination exemplifies another im-

1 vrjvos, cf. Laws , Book vn, 819 D.

SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY

195

portant function for philosophy. It evokes interest in topics
as yet remote from our crude understanding of the interplay
of natural forces. The science of the future depends for its
ready progress upon the antecedent elucidation of hypo¬
thetical complexities of connection, as yet unobserved in
nature. Plato’s mathematical speculations have been treated
as sheer mysticism by scholars who follow the literary
traditions of the Italian Renaissance. In truth, they are the
products of genius brooding on the future of intellect exploring
a world of mystery.

Greeks, Egyptians, Arabs, Jews, and Mesopotamians ad¬
vanced the science of mathematics beyond the wildest dreams
of Plato. Unfortunately this side of Plato’s interest was
notably absent among the Christian populations. I believe
it to be true that no Christian made any original contribution
to mathematical science before the revival of science at the
time of the Renaissance. Pope Silvester II — Gerbert, who
reigned in the year 1000 a.d. — studied mathematics. But he
added nothing. Roger Bacon proclaimed the importance of
mathematics and named contemporary mathematicians. In
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the University of
Oxford cherished mathematics. But none of these mediaeval
Europeans advanced the subject. An exception must be
made in favour of Leonardo of Pisa who flourished at
the beginning of the thirteenth century. He was the first
Christian to make an advance in the science which in its
early history illustrates the cultural union of the Hellenistic
Greeks with the Near East. But, subject to this qualification,
sixteenth-century mathematics was entirely based upon non-
Christian sources. Among the Christians mathematics and
magic were confused. The Pope himself hardly escaped. We
can hardly hope for a better illustration of the curious limi¬
tations of epochs and schools of civilization. It is especially

13-2

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

196

interesting in view of the dominant influence of Plato upon
Christian thought.

But the Platonic doctrine of the interweaving of Harmony
with mathematical relations has been triumphantly vindi¬
cated. The Aristotelian classifications based upon qualitative
predicates have a very restricted application apart from the
introduction of mathematical formulae. Indeed, Aristotelian
Logic, by its neglect of mathematical notions, has done almost
as much harm as good for the advancement of science. We
can never get away from the questions: How much — In
what proportions — and, In what pattern of arrangement with
other things. The exact laws of chemical proportions make
all the difference; CO will kill you, when C02 will only
give you a headache. Also COa is a necessary element for
the dilution of oxygen in the atmosphere; but too much
or too little is equally harmful. Arsenic deals out either
health or death, according to its proportions amid a pattern
of circumstances. Also when the health-giving proportion
of C02 to free oxygen has been obtained, a rearrangement
of these proportional quantities of carbon and oxygen into
carbon monoxide and free oxygen will provide a poisonous
mixture. In Political Economy, the Law of Diminishing
Returns points to the conditions for the maximum efficiency
of a dose of capital. In fact, there is hardly a question to be
asked which should not be fenced round with qualifications
as to how much, and as to what pattern of circumstances.
Aristotelian Logic, apart from the guardianship of mathe¬
matics, is the fertile matrix of fallacies. It deals with pro-
positional forms only adapted for the expression of high
abstractions, the sort of abstractions usual in current con¬
versation where the presupposed background is ignored.

But it is evident that even the appeal to mathematics is
too narrow, at least if mathematics is taken to mean those

SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY

J97

branches hitherto developed. The general science of mathe¬
matics is concerned with the investigation of patterns of
connectedness, in abstraction from the particular relata and
the particular modes of connection. It is only in some special
branches of mathematics that notions of quantity and number
are dominant themes. The real point is that the essential
connectedness of things can never be safely omitted. This is
the doctrine of the thoroughgoing relativity which infects the
universe and which makes the totality of things as it were
a Receptacle uniting all that happens.

The Greek doctrine of Composition and Harmony has
been vindicated by the progress of thought. Yet the vivid
fancy of the Greeks was also apt to invest each factor in the
Universe with an independent individuality, for example,
the self-sufficient realm of ideas which dominated Plato’s
earlier thought, and which intermittently intrudes into his
later Dialogues. But we must not blame the Greeks for this
excess of individualization. All language witnesses to the
same error. We habitually speak of stones, and planets, and
animals, as though each individual thing could exist, even
for a passing moment, in separation from an environment
which is in truth a necessary factor in its own nature. Such
an abstraction is a necessity of thought, and the requisite
background of systematic environment can be presupposed.
That is true. But it also follows that, in the absence of
some understanding of the final nature of things, and thus
of the sorts of backgrounds presupposed in such abstract
statements, all science suffers from the vice that it may be
combining various propositions which tacitly presuppose in¬
consistent backgrounds. No science can be more secure than
the unconscious metaphysics which tacitly it presupposes.
The individual thing is necessarily a modification of its
environment, and cannot be understood in disjunction. All

ig8 ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

reasoning, apart from some metaphysical reference, is
vicious.

Section VI, Thus the Certainties of Science are a delusion.
They are hedged around with unexplored limitations. Our
handling of scientific doctrines is controlled by the diffused
metaphysical concepts of our epoch. Even so, we are con¬
tinually led into errors of expectation. Also, whenever some
new mode of observational experience is obtained the old
doctrines crumble into a fog of inaccuracies.

Our co-ordinated knowledge, which in the general sense
of the term is Science, is formed by the meeting of two
orders of experience. One order is constituted by the direct,
immediate discriminations of particular observations. The
other order is constituted by our general way of conceiving
the Universe. They will be called, the Observational Order,
and the Conceptual Order. The first point to remember is
that the observational order is invariably interpreted in terms
of the concepts supplied by the conceptual order. The ques¬
tion as to the priority of one or the other is, for the purpose
of this discussion, academic. We inherit an observational
order, namely types of things which we do in fact dis¬
criminate; and we inherit a conceptual order, namely a
rough system of ideas in terms of which we do in fact
interpret. We can point to no epoch in human history, or
even in animal history, at which this interplay began. Also
it is true that novel observations modify the conceptual
order. But equally, novel concepts suggest novel possibilities
of observational discrimination.

The history of thought cannot be understood unless we
take account of a grave weakness in the observational order.
Observational discrimination is not dictated by the im¬
partial facts. It selects and discards, and what it retains is
rearranged in a subjective order of prominence. This order of

SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY

199

prominence in observation is in fact a distortion of the facts.
Thus we have to rescue the facts as they are from the facts
as they appear. We have to rescue the facts in the discard,
and we have to discard the subjective order of prominence
which is itself a fact of observation. For example, consider
the observed facts in early stages of civilization. The observed
fact was a flat Earth with the arched dome of the Sky. Even
to the contemporaries of Pope Silvester the antipodes were
inconceivable, and his reputed belief in them did no credit
to the old wizard of a Pope.

Again we view the sky at noon on a fine day. It is blue,
flooded by the light of the Sun. The direct fact of observation
is the sun as the sole origin of light, and the bare heavens.
Conceive the myth of Adam and Eve in the Garden on
the first day of human life. They watch the sunset, the stars
appear:

‘And, Lo! creation widened to man’s view’.

The excess of light discloses facts and also conceals them.
It distorts the facts for human observation. It is one task of
speculation to urge observation beyond the boundaries of its
delusive completeness, and to urge the doctrines of science
beyond their delusive air of finality.

We can now briefly characterize the history of the transfor¬
mation of mediaeval cosmology into our modern standpoint.
The effective agency in this transformation has a history
of about eighteen hundred years entirely divorced from
physical observation. It is a history of abstract thought,
namely, of the development of mathematics. The interest,
which was the motive in its development, was the interest in
the co-ordination of theoretical notions and in the theoretical
constructions arising from the domination of such notions.
Yet, if many modern philosophers and men of science could
have had their way, they would have been dissuading

200

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

Greeks, Jews, and Mahommedans from such useless studies,
from such pure abstractions for which no foresight could
divine the ghost of an application. Luckily they could not
get at their ancestors.

Section VII. The services to mankind rendered by the
Newtonian System of Nature are incalculable. It combines
ideas derived from Plato, Aristotle, and Epicurus, into a con¬
sistent scheme of thought which elucidates an incredible
number of observed facts. Thereby it has enabled men to
obtain a new command over Nature. Where we formerly
obeyed, we now direct. But at last the Newton cosmology
has broken down.

The story of the breakdown extends over more than a
century. For by far the greater part of that period men of
science were quite unaware that the ideas which they were
introducing, slowly, one after the other, were finally to
accumulate into a body of thought inconsistent with the
Newtonian ideas dominating their thoughts and shaping
their modes of expression. The story commences with the
wave-theory of light and ends with the wave- theory of matter.
It finally leaves us with the philosophic question, What are
the concrete facts which exhibit this mathematical attribute
of wave-vibration?

The story in detail is the history of modern physics, which
lies beyond the scope of this discussion. We merely require
to understand the contrast between the most general notions
respectively underlying Newtonian physics and modern
physics. Newtonian physics is based upon the independent
individuality of each bit of matter. Each stone is conceived
as fully describable apart from any reference to any other
portion of matter. It might be alone in the Universe, the
sole occupant of uniform space. But it would still be that
stone which it is. Also the stone could be adequately de-

SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY

201

scribed without any reference to past or future. It is to be
conceived fully and adequately as wholly constituted within
the present moment.

This is the full Newtonian concept, which bit by bit was
given away, or dissolved, by the advance of modern physics.
It is the thorough-going doctrine of ‘simple location5 and of
‘external relations5. There was some divergence of opinion
as to the external relations. Newton himself was inclined to
construe them in terms of shock and of stress between con¬
tiguous bodies. But his immediate followers, such as Roger
Cotes, added the notion of force at a distance. But either
alternative was wholly and completely a fact in the present,
namely, the fact of that external relation between two bits
of matter either contiguous or distant. The opposed doctrine
of internal relations has been distorted by reason of its de¬
scription in terms of language adapted to the presupposition
of external relations of the Newtonian type. Even its ad¬
herents, such as F. H. Bradley for instance, fall into this pitfall.
It must be remembered that just as the relations modify the
natures of the relata, so the relata modify the nature of the
relation. The relationship is not a universal. It is a concrete
fact with the same concreteness as the relata. The notion of
the immanence of the cause in the effect illustrates this truth.
We have to discover a doctrine of nature which expresses
the concrete relatedness of physical functionings and mental
functionings, of the past with the present, and also expresses
the concrete composition of physical realities which are
individually diverse.

Modern physics has abandoned the doctrine of Simple
Location. The physical things which we term stars, planets,
lumps of matter, molecules, electrons, protons, quanta of
energy, are each to be conceived as modifications of con¬
ditions within space-time, extending throughout its whole

202

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

range. There is a focal region, which in common speech is
where the thing is. But its influence streams away from it
with finite velocity throughout the utmost recesses of space
and time. Of course, it is natural, and for certain purposes
entirely proper, to speak of the focal region, thus modified,
as the thing itself situated there. But difficulties arise if we
press this way of thought too far. For physics, the thing itself
is what it does, and what it does is this divergent stream
of influence. Again the focal region cannot be separated
from the external stream. It obstinately refuses to be con¬
ceived as an instantaneous fact. It is a state of agitation, only
differing from the so-called external stream by its superior
dominance within the focal region. Also we are puzzled
how to express exactly the existence of these physical things
at any definite moment of time. For at every instantaneous
point-event, within or without the focal region, the modifica¬
tion to be ascribed to this thing is antecedent to, or successive
to, the corresponding modification introduced by that thing
at another point-event. Thus if we endeavour to conceive
a complete instance of the existence of the physical thing
in question, we cannot confine ourselves to one part of space
or to one moment of time. The physical thing is a certain
co-ordination of spaces and times and of conditions in
those spaces at those times, this co-ordination illustrating
one exemplification of a certain general rule, expressible in
terms of mathematical relations. Here we have returned to
a fundamental Platonic doctrine.

Again, with the denial of simple location we must admit
that within any region of space-time the innumerable mul¬
titude of these physical things are in a sense superposed.
Thus the physical fact at each region of space-time is a com¬
position of what the physical entities throughout the Universe
mean for that region. But a complete existence is not a com-

SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY

203

position of mathematical formulae, mere formulae. It is a
concrete composition of things illustrating formulae. There
is an interweaving of qualitative and quantitative elements.
For example, when a living body assimilates food, the fact
cannot be merely that one mathematical formula assimilates
another mathematical formula. The fact cannot be merely
that the equality of two and three with five assimilates the
fact of the equality of thrice three with nine, nor can the
number eleven assimilate the number sixteen. Any of these
mathematical notions may be illustrated, but the fact is more
than the formulae illustrated.

Section VIII. The final problem is to conceive a complete
[77avreA^s“] fact.1 We can only form such a conception in
terms of fundamental notions concerning the nature of
reality. We are thrown back upon philosophy. Centuries ago
Plato divined the seven main factors interwoven in fact:
The Ideas, The Physical Elements, The Psyche, The Eros,
The Harmony, The Mathematical Relations, The Receptacle.
All philosophical systems are endeavours to express the inter¬
weaving of these components. Of course, it is most un-
scholarly to identify our modern notions with these archaic
thoughts of Plato. For us everything has a subtle difference.
But for all these differences, human thought is now en¬
deavouring to express analogous elements in the composition of
nature. It only dimly discerns, it misdescribes, and it wrongly
associates. But always there remain the same beacons that
lure. Systems, scientific and philosophic, come and go. Each
method of limited understanding is at length exhausted. In
its prime each system is a triumphant success: in its decay
it is an obstructive nuisance. The transitions to new fruitful-

1 Cf. Sophist , 248 E, to) 7ravre\co9 ovri. Here 1 ravreXcos is often wrongly
translated by ‘absolute’. For Plato’s reference to ‘absolute’ and ‘relative’, cf.
Sophist , 255 C.

204

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

ness of understanding are achieved by recurrence to the
utmost depths of intuition for the refreshment of imagination.
In the end — though there is no end — what is being achieved,
is width of view, issuing in greater opportunities. But oppor¬
tunity leads upwards or downwards. In unthinking Nature
‘natural selection’ is a synonym for ‘waste’. Philosophy
should now perform its final service. It should seek the
insight, dim though it be, to escape the wide wreckage of a
race of beings sensitive to values beyond those of mere animal
enjoyment.

CHAPTER X

THE NEW REFORMATION

Section I. The theme of this chapter can be introduced
by directing attention to a contrast. Protestant Christianity,
so far as concerns the institutional and dogmatic forms in
which it flourished for three hundred years as derived from
Luther, Calvin, and the Anglican Settlement, is showing all
the signs of a steady decay. Its dogmas no longer dominate:
its divisions no longer interest: its institutions no longer direct
the patterns of life. That is one side of the contrast.

The other side is that the religious spirit as an effective
element in the affairs of men has just [April, 1931] obtained
one of its most signal triumphs. In India the forces of
violence and strife, between rulers and people, between races,
between religions, between social grades— forces threatening
to overwhelm with violence hundreds of millions of man¬
kind — these forces have for the moment been halted by two
men acting with the moral authority of religious conviction,
the Mahatma Gandhi and the Viceroy of India [Lord
Irwin] .

They may fail. More than two thousand years ago, the
wisest of men proclaimed that the divine persuasion is the
foundation of the order of the world, but that it could only
produce such a measure of harmony as amid brute forces
it was possible to accomplish. This, I suggest, is a plain
anticipation by Plato of a doctrine of Grace, seven hundred
years before the age of Pelagius and Augustine.

206

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

But the dramatic halt effected by Gandhi and the Viceroy,
requiring as it does an effective response from uncounted
millions in India, in England, in Europe, and America,
witnesses that the religious motive, I mean the response to
the divine persuasion, still holds its old power, even more
than its old power, over the minds and the consciences of men.
In this response the protestant populations of the British
Empire, and importantly, though more remotely, that of
the United States, have sustained their part. We stand at a
moment when the course of history depends upon the calm
reasonableness arising from a religious public opinion. An
initial triumph has already been gained.

There is the contrast, decay and survival. We have to
estimate what has decayed, and what has survived. My
thesis is that a new Reformation is in full progress. It is
a reformation; but whether its issue be fortunate or un¬
fortunate depends largely on the actions of comparatively
few men, and notably upon the leaders of the protestant
clergy.

I do not hold it to be possible, or even desirable, that
identity of detailed belief can be attained. But it is possible
that amid diversities of belief, arising from differences of
stress exhibited in metaphysical insight and from differences
of sympathetic intuition respecting historical events — that it
is possible, amid these differences, to reach a general agree¬
ment as to those elements, in intimate human experience
and in general history, which we select to exemplify that
ultimate theme of the divine immanence, as a completion
required by our cosmological outlook. In other words, we
may agree as to the qualitative aspects of religious facts,
and as to their general way of co-ordination in meta¬
physical theory, while disagreeing in various explanatory
formulations.

THE NEW REFORMATION

207

The problem, however, is not nearly so simple as this
exordium suggests. We are dealing with a topic, complex
and many-sided. It comprises the deliverances of the under¬
standing as it harmonizes our deepest intuitions. It com¬
prises emotional responses to formulations of thought and to
modes of behaviour. It comprises the direction of purposes
and the modifications of behaviour. It cuts into every aspect
of human existence. So far as concerns religious problems,
simple solutions are bogus solutions. It is written, that he
who runs, may read. But it is not said, that he provides
the writing.

For religion is concerned with our reactions of purpose
and emotion due to our personal measure of intuition into
the ultimate mystery of the universe. We must not postulate
simplicity. The witness of history and of common sense
tells us that systematic formulations are potent engines of
emphasis, of purification, and of stability. Christianity would
long ago have sunk into a noxious superstition, apart from
the Levantine and European intellectual movement, sus¬
tained from the very beginning until now. This movement
is the effort of Reason to provide an accurate system of
theology. Indeed, in outlying districts where this effort at
rationalization died away, the religion has in fact sunk into
the decrepitude of failure.

Section II. Thus the attack of the liberal clergy and lay¬
men, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, upon
systematic theology was entirely misconceived. They were
throwing away the chief safeguard against the wild emo¬
tions of superstition. A civilized religion should aim at the
training of such emotions as naturally arise from a civilized
rational criticism of the metaphysical intuitions powerfully
influential in great epochs of human history. The appeal
to history is the appeal to summits of attainment beyond any

208

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

immediate clarity in our own individual existence. It is an
appeal to authority. The appeal to reason is the appeal to
that ultimate judge, universal and yet individual to each,
to which all authority must bow. History has authority so
far, and exactly so far, as it admits of some measure of
rational interpretation.

Thus an attack upon systematic thought is treason to
civilization. Yet the great minds who laid the foundations
of our modern mentality — John Locke, for example — had
reason for their dissatisfaction with the traditional dogmatic
theology, though they partially misconceived the grounds
upon which they should base their attitude. Their true
enemy was the doctrine of dogmatic finality, a doctrine
which flourished and is flourishing with equal vigour through¬
out Theology, Science, and Metaphysics. The methodology
of rational thought from the Greeks to our own times has
been vitiated by this fundamental misconception. These
errors are not confined to religious thought. They have
infected all departments. Their total effect has been to intro¬
duce in each age a dogmatic sense of finality. The emphasis
of certainty has been wrongly placed, and with equal error
dogmatic rejection.

From the very beginning of critical thought, we find the
distinction between topics susceptible of certain knowledge,
and topics about which only uncertain opinions are available.
The dawn of this distinction, explicitly entertained, is the
dawn of modern mentality. It introduces criticism. Such
a notion hardly enters into any book of the Bible, either
in the mind of Jehovah, or of any of his worshippers. The
first effect of this new distinction was very unfortunate.
For it was much too simple-minded, and the area of cer¬
tainty was misconceived. For example, we find Plato in his
old age advocating religious persecution, and justifying him-

THE NEW REFORMATION 209

self by the importance of the topic and the certainty of his
own demonstrations.1

I suggest that the development of systematic theology
should be accompanied by a critical understanding of the
relation of linguistic expression to our deepest and most
persistent intuitions. Language was developed in response
to the excitements of practical actions. It is concerned with
the prominent facts. Such facts are those seized upon by
consciousness for detailed examination, with the view of
emotional response leading to immediate purposeful action.
These prominent facts are the variable facts — the appearance
of a tiger, of a clap of thunder, or of a spasm of pain. They
are the facts entering into experience by the medium of our
sense-organs. Hence the sensationalist doctrine concerning
the data which are the origin of experience.

But the prominent facts are the superficial facts. They
vary because they are superficial; and they enter into con¬
scious discrimination because they vary. There are other
elements in our experience, on the fringe of consciousness,
and yet massively qualifying our experience. In regard to
these other facts, it is our consciousness that flickers, and not
the facts themselves. They are always securely there, barely
discriminated, and yet inescapable. For example, consider
our derivation from our immediate past of a quarter of a
second ago. We are continuous with it, we are the same
as it, prolonging its affective tone, enjoying its data. And
yet we are modifying it, deflecting it, changing its pur¬
poses, altering its tone, re-conditioning its data with new
elements.

We reduce this past to a perspective, and yet retain it
as the basis of our present moment of realization. We are
different from it, and yet we retain our individual identity with

1 Gf. Plato’s Laws , Book x.

wi

14

210

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

it. This is the mystery of personal identity, the mystery of
the immanence of the past in the present, the mystery of
transience. All our science, all our explanations require con¬
cepts originating in this experience of derivation. In respect
to such intuitions, language is peculiarly inadequate. Our
powers of analysis, and of expression, flicker with our con¬
sciousness. It is not true that there is a definite area of human
consciousness, within which there is clear discrimination and
beyond which mere darkness. Nor is it true that elements
of experience are important in proportion to their clarity in
consciousness.

The appeal to history gains its importance by reason of
this complex character of human experience. Metaphysics
and theology alike require it. The requisite evidence cannot
be gained by mere acts of direct introspection conducted at
one epoch by a few clear-sighted individuals. If a flood of
oblivion should overwhelm human memory, we could in
this way of introspection recover the multiplication table.
But not much else. In each age of the world, the actions
of men and their interpretations of feelings, motives, and
purposes, throw light upon the recesses of their experience.
In this elucidation of what it means to live, to act, and feel,
age differs from age. In the discrimination of this historical
evidence, there is required a criticism founded upon taste,
and a criticism founded upon logical analysis and inductive
probability.

The two grounds of criticism, aesthetic and logical, are
welded together in the final judgment of reason as to the
comparison of historical periods, one with the other. Each
age deposits its message as to the secret character of the
nature of things. Civilizations can only be understood by
those who are civilized. And they have this property, that
the appropriation of them in the understanding unveils

THE NEW REFORMATION

21 1

truths concerning our own natures. It has been said that
the great dramatic tragedies in their representations before
audiences act as a purification of the passions. In the same
way, the great periods of history act as an enlightenment.
They reveal ourselves to ourselves.

Section III. Christianity bases itself upon an intensive
study of the significance of certain historical occasions scat¬
tered irregularly within a period of about twelve hundred
years, from the earlier Hebrew prophets and historians to
the stabilization of western theology by Augustine. The story
wanders around the shores of the Eastern Mediterranean,
from the Palestine of the prophets to the Athens of Plato:
it culminates in Galilee and Jerusalem: the main interest
then fluctuates uncertainly backwards and forwards between
Antioch, Ephesus, Egypt, Rome, Constantinople and Africa.
When Augustine died at Hippo in the year 430, the religion
of the European races was in its main outlines settled.
All its capacities for variant forms were already inherent
in it. The Papal Church, the Eastern Church, Wycliffe and
Huss, Luther and Calvin, Archbishop Cranmer, Jonathan
Edwards and John Wesley, Erasmus, Ignatius Loyola, the
Socinians, George Fox, and the Vatican Council could with
equal right appeal to history. The conclusion to be drawn
from the appeal entirely depends upon the value-judgments
guiding your selection, and upon the metaphysical presup¬
positions dictating your notions of a coherent theology. The
appeal is to the actions, thoughts, emotions, and institutions,
which great persons and great occasions had made effective
on the shores of the Mediterranean within that earlier period
of time.

In this appeal to history we must remember the gaps in
time between the extant written Gospels and the events
which they relate: the discordances in accounts, the transla-

14-2

212

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

tions of tradition from language to language, the suspicious
passages: also the seeming indifference to direct historical
evidence, notably in the case of St Paul, who retired to
Arabia when we should have expected him to have recourse
to the disciples who had seen his Lord. I mention these
latter points, upon which whole libraries have been written,
merely to draw the unquestioned conclusion that any modern
re-formation of the religion must first concentrate upon the
moral and metaphysical intuitions scattered throughout the
whole epoch. This conclusion is a commonplace of modern
thought.

I suggest, with the diffidence due to my entire lack of
expertness in the literature of this immense stretch of history,
that even now there is room for a new appeal to the lesson
to be derived from it. In this chapter I shall deal wholly in
general principles. My personal conclusions as to the details
of reconstruction have none of the importance to be ascribed
; to scholarship. Also to speak with complete candour, I cannot
place any of the events within that period as out of scale in
type of happenings with analogous occurrences elsewhere.
I do hold, however, that the culminating points of the period
embody the greatest advances in the expression of moral
and intellectual intuitions which mark the growth of recent
civilization.

The period as a whole begins in barbarism and ends in
failure. The failure consisted in the fact that barbaric ele¬
ments and the defects in intellectual comprehension had not
been discarded, but remained as essential elements in the
various formulations of Christian theology, orthodox and
heretical alike. Also the later Protestant Reformation was,
in this respect, an even more complete failure, in no way
improving Catholic theology. The Quakers perhaps form a
minor exception to this statement. But George Fox lived a

THE NEW REFORMATION 213

hundred years after the age of Luther. The issue of these
failures is the tragic history of Christianity.

Section IV. I suggest that in the whole period there are
three culminating phases which, in theological language,
constitute its threefold revelation. The first and the last
phases were primarily intellectual with a sufficient back¬
ground of moral insight. The middle phase, which forms
the driving power of the religion, is primarily an exhibition
in life of moral intuition, with a sufficiency of intellectual
insight to give an articulate expression of singular beauty.
The three phases are bound together as intellectual discovery
— then exemplification — finally metaphysical interpretation.
The discovery and the exemplification are historically in¬
dependent.

The first phase is constituted by Plato’s publication of his
final conviction, towards the end of his life,1 that the divine
element in the world is to be conceived as a persuasive
agency and not as a coercive agency. This doctrine should
be looked upon as one of the greatest intellectual discoveries
in the history of religion. It is plainly enunciated by Plato,
though he failed to co-ordinate it systematically with the rest
of his metaphysical theory. Indeed, Plato always failed in
his attempts at systematization, and always succeeded in dis¬
playing depth of metaphysical intuition — the greatest meta¬
physician, the poorest systematic thinker. The alternative
doctrine, prevalent then and now, sees either in the many
gods or in the one God, the final coercive forces wielding
the thunder. By a metaphysical sublimation of this doctrine
of God as the supreme agency of compulsion, he is trans¬
formed into the one supreme reality, omnipotently disposing
a wholly derivative world. Plato wavered inconsistently be¬
tween these diverse conceptions. But he does finally enunciate

1 Cf. the Sophist and the Timaeus.

214

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

without qualification the doctrine of the divine persuasion,
by reason of which ideals are effective in the world and forms
of order evolve.

The second phase is the supreme moment in religious
history, according to the Christian religion. The essence of
Christianity is the appeal to the life of Christ as a revelation
of the nature of God and of his agency in the world. The
record is fragmentary, inconsistent, and uncertain. It is not
necessary for me to express any opinion as to the proper
reconstruction of the most likely tale of historic fact. Such
a procedure would be useless, without value, and entirely
out of place in this book. But there can be no doubt as to
what elements in the record have evoked a response from
all that is best in human nature. The Mother, the Child,
and the bare manger: the lowly man, homeless and self-
forgetful, with his message of peace, love, and sympathy:
the suffering, the agony, the tender words as life ebbed, the
final despair: and the whole with the authority of supreme
victory.

I need not elaborate. Can there be any doubt that the
power of Christianity lies in its revelation in act, of that
which Plato divined in theory?

The third phase is again intellectual. It is the first period
in the formation of Christian theology by the schools of
thought mainly associated with Alexandria and Antioch. The
originality and value of their contribution to the thought of
the world has been greatly underestimated. This is partly
their own fault. For they persisted in declaring that they
were only stating the faith once delivered to the saints;
whereas in fact they were groping after the solution of a
fundamental metaphysical problem, although presented to
them in a highly special form.

These Christian theologians have the distinction of being

THE NEW REFORMATION

215

the only thinkers who in a fundamental metaphysical doc¬
trine have improved upon Plato. It is true that this period
of Christian theology was Platonic. But it is also true that
Plato is the originator of the heresies and of the feeblest
side of Christian Theology. When Plato is faced with the
problem of expressing the relationship of God to the World,
and of the relation to the World of those Ideas which it is
in God’s nature to contemplate, Plato’s answer is invariably
framed in terms of mere dramatic imitation. When Plato
turns to the World, after considering God as giving life and
motion to the ideas by the inclusion of them in the divine
nature, he can find only second-rate substitutes and never
the originals. For Plato there is a derivative second-rate
God of the World, who is a mere Icon, that is to say an
image. Also when he looks for the ideas, he can only find,
in the World, imitations. Thus the World, for Plato, includes
only the image of God, and imitations of his ideas, and never
God and his ideas.

Plato has definite reasons for this gap between the transient
world and the eternal nature of God. He is avoiding
difficulties, although he only achieves the feeblest of solu¬
tions. What metaphysics requires is a solution exhibiting
the plurality of individuals as consistent with the unity of
the Universe, and a solution which exhibits the World as
requiring its union with God, and God as requiring his
union with the World. Sound doctrine also requires an
understanding how the Ideals in God’s nature, by reason of
their status in his nature, are thereby persuasive elements
in the creative advance. Plato grounded these derivations
from God upon his will; whereas metaphysics requires that
the relationships of God to the World should lie beyond
the accidents of will, and that they be founded upon the
necessities of the nature of God and the nature of the World.

2l6

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

These problems came before the Christian theologians in
highly special forms. They had to consider the nature of
God. On this topic, there can be no doubt that the Arian
solution, involving a derivative Image, is orthodox Platonism,
though it be heterodox Christianity. The accepted solution of
a multiplicity in the nature of God, each component being un¬
qualifiedly Divine, involves a doctrine of mutual immanence
in the divine nature. I am not in any way venturing upon
a decision upon the correctness of the original assumption
of this multiplicity. The point is the recourse to a doctrine
of mutual immanence.

Again, the theologians had also to construct a doctrine of
the person of Christ. And again they rejected the doctrine
of an association of the human individual with a divine indi¬
vidual, involving responsive imitations in the human person.
They decided for the direct immanence of God in the one
person of Christ. They also decided for some sort of direct
immanence of God in the World generally. This was their
doctrine of the third person of the Trinity. I am not making
any judgment about the details of their theology, for example,
about the Trinitarian doctrine. My point is that in the place
of Plato’s solution of secondary images and imitations, they
demanded a direct doctrine of immanence. It is in this respect
that they made a metaphysical discovery. They pointed out
the way in which Platonic metaphysics should develop, if it
was to give a rational account of the role of the persuasive
agency of God.

Unfortunately, the theologians never made this advance
into general metaphysics. The reason for this check was
another unfortunate presupposition. The nature of God was
exempted from all the metaphysical categories which applied
to the individual things in this temporal world. The con¬
cept of him was a sublimation from its barbaric, origin. He

THE NEW REFORMATION

217

stood in the same relation to the whole World as early
Egyptian or Mesopotamian kings stood to their subject
populations. Also the moral characters were very analogous.
In the final metaphysical sublimation, he became the one
absolute, omnipotent, omniscient source of all being, for his
own existence requiring no relations to anything beyond
himself. He was internally complete. Such a conception
fitted on very well to the Platonic doctrine of subordinate
derivations. The final insistence, after much wavering,
on the immanence of God was therefore all the more a
fine effort of metaphysical imagination on the part of the
theologians of the early Christian ages. But their general
concept of the Deity stopped all further generalization.
They made no effort to conceive the World in terms of the
metaphysical categories by means of which they interpreted
God, and they made no effort to conceive God in terms
of the metaphysical categories which they applied to the
World. For them, God was eminently real, and the World
was derivatively real. God was necessary to the World, but
the World was not necessary to God. There was a gulf
between them.

The worst of a gulf is, that it is very difficult to know
what is happening on the further side of it. This has been
the fate of the God of traditional theology. It is only by
drawing the long bow of mysticism that evidences for his
existence can be collected from our temporal World. Also
the worst of unqualified omnipotence is that it is accom¬
panied by responsibility for every detail of every happening.
This whole topic is discussed by Hume in his famous
Dialogues.

Section V. I am suggesting that Protestant theology
should develop as its foundation an interpretation of the
Universe which grasps its unity amid its many diversities.

2l8

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

The interpretation to be achieved is a reconciliation of
seeming incompatibilities. But these incompatibilities are
not hypothetical. They are there on the stage of history,
undoubted and claiming interpretation. There stand in the
public view the persuasiveness of the eternal ideals, the same
to-day as when realized in the Founder of Christianity, and
the compulsoriness of physical nature, which passes and yet
remains, and the compulsoriness of that realized urge tov/ard
social union, such as the Roman Empire, which was then, and
is now as it were a dream. Nature changes and yet remains.
The ideals declare themselves as timeless; and yet they pass
on, as it were the flicker of a brightness.

It is the business of philosophical theology to provide a
rational understanding of the rise of civilization, and of the
tendernesses of mere life itself, in a world which superficially
is founded upon the clashings of senseless compulsion. I am
not disguising my belief that in this task, theology has
largely failed. The notion of the absolute despot has stood
in the way. The doctrine of Grace has been degraded, and
the doctrines of the Atonement are mostly crude. The defect
of the liberal theology of the last two hundred years is
that it has confined itself to the suggestion of minor, vapid
reasons why people should continue to go to church in the
traditional fashion.

The last book in the Bible illustrates the barbaric elements
which have been retained to the undoing of Christian in¬
tuition. In itself and apart from its bearing upon religious
sentiment, it is one of the finest examples of imaginative
literature as it stands translated in King James’s Bible. Also,
as an historical document, whether its origin be Christian or
Jewish, it is of priceless value for the understanding of
strains of thought prevalent when the Christian religion was
in process of formation. Finally, the book only states, more

THE NEW REFORMATION

219

pointedly and more vividly, ideas spread throughout the
Old Testament and the New Testament, even in the Gospels
themselves. Yet it is shocking to think that this book has
been retained for the formation of religious sentiment, while
the speech of Pericles, descriptive of the Athenian ideal of
civilization, has remained neglected in this connection. What
I am advocating can be symbolized by this shift in the final
book of the authoritative collection of religious literature,
namely, the replacement of the book of the Revelation of
St John the Divine by the imaginative account given by
Thucydides of the Speech of Pericles to the Athenians.
Neither of them is history: St John never received just that
revelation, nor did Pericles ever make just that speech.

Section VI. There remains for discussion one final ques¬
tion. I wish to emphasize the importance that, amid many
divergencies of interpretation, the leaders of religious thought
should to-day concentrate upon the Christian tradition and
more particularly upon its historical origins. In the case of the
more conservative schools of thought such advice is, of course,
unnecessary, and indeed impertinent. But it is a question
for discussion why the more radical schools should not cut
entirely free from any appeal to the past, and concentrate
entirely upon the contemporary world and contemporary
examples. The summary answer is that in so far as such an
appeal to tradition can be made with complete honesty,
without any shadow of evasion, there is an enormous gain
in popular effectiveness.

Civilization is constituted out of four elements, (1) Patterns
of Behaviour, (2) Patterns of Emotion, (3) Patterns of Belief,
and (4) Technologies. We can at once dismiss Technologies
as beyond our topic, though all four constitutive elements
interact upon each other. Also patterns of behaviour are
in the long run sustained or modified by patterns of

220

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

emotion and patterns of belief. It is the primary business
of religion to concentrate upon emotion and belief.

Now, so far as concerns beliefs of a general character, it
is much easier for them to destroy emotion than to generate
it. In any survey of the adventure of ideas nothing is more
surprising than the ineffectiveness of novel general ideas to
acquire for themselves an appropriate emotional pattern of
any intensity. Profound flashes of insight remain ineffective
for centuries, not because they are unknown, but by reason
of dominant interests which inhibit reaction to that type of
generality. The history of religion is the history of the
countless generations required for interest to attach itself to
profound ideas. For this reason religions are so often more
barbarous than the civilizations in which they flourish.

This faintness of impress of general ideas upon the human
mind has another effect. It is difficult even for acute
thinkers to understand the analogies between ideas expressed
in diverse phraseologies and illustrated by different sorts of
examples. Desperate intellectual battles have been fought by
philosophers who have expressed the same idea in different
ways. For both these reasons, if you want to make a new
start in religion, based upon ideas of profound generality,
you must be content to wait a thousand years. Religions are
like species of animals: they do not originate from special
creations.

Finally, if there be any truth in the contention that dog¬
matic finality of verbal expression is a mistaken notion,
there is an enormous advantage in keeping together, with
common modes of procedure, religious opinions of analogous
types. They can learn from each other, borrow from each
other, and individuals can make imperceptible transitions.
Above all, they can learn to understand each other and to
lovec

THE NEW REFORMATION

22 I

Must ‘ religion 5 always remain as a synonym for ‘ hatred ’ ?
The great social ideal for religion is that it should be the
common basis for the unity of civilization. In that way it
justifies its insight beyond the transient clash of brute forces.

This discussion has concentrated upon three culminating
phases, the thought of Plato, the life of Christ, and the first
formative period of Christian theology. But this whole period
of twelve centuries, with its legendary antecedents and its
modern successors, is required to complete the tale of the
Christian religion. The story is wholly concerned with the
interplay of ideas belonging to different levels of insight. The
religious spirit is always in process of being explained away,
distorted, buried. Yet, since the travel of mankind toward
civilization, it is always there.

The task of Theology is to show how the World is founded
on something beyond mere transient fact, and how it issues
in something beyond the perishing of occasions. The tem¬
poral World is the stage of finite accomplishment. We ask of
Theology to express that element in perishing lives which
is undying by reason of its expression of perfections proper
to our finite natures. In this way we shall understand how
life includes a mode of satisfaction deeper than joy or sorrow.

PART III

PHILOSOPHICAL

CHAPTER XI

OBJECTS AND SUBJECTS

HTM \ r / /n e > n / a

. . . 1 o rrapov eKacrrcp ttcluos , cov at aicrcnjaet? /cat
raura? 8o£a t yLyvovrai, . . . Theaetetus , 1 79 C.

at zcaTa

§ i. Prefatory. When Descartes, Locke, and Hume under¬
take the analysis of experience, they utilize those elements
in their own experience which lie clear and distinct, fit for
the exactitude of intellectual discourse. It is tacitly assumed,
except by Plato, that the more fundamental factors will ever
lend themselves for discrimination with peculiar clarity. This
assumption is here directly challenged.

§ 2. Structure of Experience. No topic has suffered more
from this tendency of philosophers than their account of the
object-subject structure of experience. In the first place, this
structure has been identified with the bare relation of knower
to known. The subject is the knower, the object is the
known. Thus, with this interpretation, the object-subject
relation is the known-knower relation. It then follows that
the more clearly any instance of this relation stands out for
discrimination, the more safely we can utilize it for the inter¬
pretation of the status of experience in the universe of things.
Hence Descartes’ appeal to clarity and distinctness.

This deduction presupposes that the subject-object relation
is the fundamental structural pattern of experience. I agree
with this presupposition, but not in the sense in which subject-
object is identified with knower-known. I contend that the
notion of mere knowledge is a high abstraction, and that

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conscious discrimination itself is a variable factor only present
in the more elaborate examples of occasions of experience.
The basis of experience is emotional. Stated more generally,
the basic fact is the rise of an affective tone originating from
things whose relevance is given.

§ 3. Phraseology. Thus the Quaker word ‘concern5, divested
of any suggestion of knowledge, is more fitted to express this
fundamental structure. The occasion as subject has a 4 concern 5
for the object. And the ‘concern5 at once places the object
as a component in the experience of the subject, with an
affective tone drawn from this object and directed towards it.
With this interpretation the subject-object relation is the
fundamental structure of experience.

Quaker usages of language are not widely spread. Also
each phraseology leads to a crop of misunderstandings.
The subject-object relation can be conceived as Recipient
and Provoker, where the fact provoked is an affective tone
about the status of the provoker in the provoked experience.
Also the total provoked occasion is a totality involving many
such examples of provocation. Again this phraseology is un¬
fortunate ; for the word ‘ recipient 5 suggests a passivity which
is erroneous.

§ 4. Prehensions. A more formal explanation is as follows.
An occasion of experience is an activity, analysable into
modes of functioning which jointly constitute its process of
becoming. Each mode is analysable into the total experi¬
ence as active subject, and into the thing or object with
which the special activity is concerned. This thing is a
datum, that is to say, is describable without reference to its
entertainment in that occasion. An object is anything per¬
forming this function of a datum provoking some special
activity of the occasion in question. Thus subject and object
are relative terms. An occasion is a subject in respect to its

OBJECTS AND SUBJECTS

227

special activity concerning an object; and anything is an
object in respect to its provocation of some special activity
within a subject. Such a mode of activity is termed a ‘pre¬
hension5. Thus a prehension involves three factors. There
is the occasion of experience within which the prehension
is a detail of activity; there is the datum whose relevance
provokes the origination of this prehension; this datum is
the prehended object; there is the subjective form, which
is the affective tone determining the effectiveness of that
prehension in that occasion of experience. How the ex¬
perience constitutes itself depends on its complex of subjective
forms.

§ 5. Individuality. The individual immediacy of an occasion
is the final unity of subjective form, which is the occasion
as an absolute reality. This immediacy is its moment of sheer
individuality, bounded on either side by essential relativity.
The occasion arises from relevant objects, and perishes into
the status of an object for other occasions. But it enjoys
its decisive moment of absolute self-attainment as emotional
unity. As used here the words ‘individual5 and ‘atom5 have
the same meaning, that they apply to composite things
with an absolute reality which their components lack. These
words properly apply to an actual entity in its immediacy
of self-attainment when it stands out as for itself alone, with
its own affective self-enjoyment. The term ‘monad5 also
expresses this essential unity at the decisive moment, which
stands between its birth and its perishing. The creativity
of the world is the throbbing emotion of the past hurling
itself into a new transcendent fact. It is the flying dart, of
which Lucretius speaks, hurled beyond the bounds of the
world.

§ 6. Knowledge. All knowledge is conscious discrimination
of objects experienced. But this conscious discrimination,

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which is knowledge, is nothing more than an additional
factor in the subjective form of the interplay of subject with
object. This interplay is the stuff constituting those individual
things which make up the sole reality of the Universe. These
individual things are the individual occasions of experience,
the actual entities.

But we do not so easily get rid of knowledge. After all,
it is knowledge that philosophers seek. And all knowledge
is derived from, and verified by, direct intuitive observation.
I accept this axiom of empiricism as stated in this general
form. The question then arises how the structure of ex¬
perience outlined above is directly observed. In answering
this challenge I remind myself of the old advice that the
doctrines which best repay critical examination are those
which for the longest period have remained unquestioned.

§ 7. Sense-Perception. The particular age-long group of
doctrines which I have in mind is: (1) that all perception is
by the mediation of our bodily sense-organs, such as eyes,
palates, noses, ears, and the diffused bodily organization
furnishing touches, aches, and other bodily sensations; (2)
that all percepta are bare sensa, in patterned connections,
given in the immediate present; (3) that our experience
of a social world is an interpretative reaction wholly de¬
rivative from this perception; (4) that our emotional and
purposive experience is a reflective reaction derived from
the original perception, and intertwined with the interpre¬
tative reaction and partly shaping it. Thus the two reactions
are different aspects of one process, involving interpretative,
emotional, and purposive factors. Of course, we are all
aware that there are powerful schools of philosophy which
explicitly reject this doctrine. Yet I cannot persuade myself
that this rejection has been taken seriously by writers be-

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229

longing to the schools in question. When the direct question
as to things perceived arises, it seems to me that the answer
is always returned in terms of sensa perceived.

§ 8. Perceptive Functions. In the examination of the sen¬
sationalist doctrine, the first question to be asked concerns
the general definition of what we mean by those functions
of experience which we term ‘perceptions’. If we define
them as those experiential functions which arise directly
from the stimulation of the various bodily sense-organs, then
argument ceases. The traditional doctrine then becomes a
mere matter of definition of the use of the word ‘perception’.
Indeed, having regard to long-standing usage, I am inclined
to agree that it may be advisable for philosophers to confine
the word ‘ perception ’ to this limited meaning. But the point
on which I am insisting is that this meaning is limited, and
that there is a wider meaning with which this limited use of
the term ‘perception’ has been tacitly identified.

§ 9. Objects. The process of experiencing is constituted by
the reception of entities, whose being is antecedent to that
process, into the complex fact which is that process itself.
These antecedent entities, thus received as factors into the
process of experiencing, are termed ‘objects’ for that experi¬
ential occasion. Thus primarily the term ‘object’ expresses
the relation of the entity, thus denoted, to one or more occa¬
sions of experiencing. Two conditions must be fulfilled in
order that an entity may function as an object in a process
of experiencing: (1) the entity must be antecedent , and
(2) the entity must be experienced in virtue of its ante¬
cedence; it must be given. Thus an object must be a thing
received, and must not be either a mode of reception or
a thing generated in that occasion. Thus the process of
experiencing is constituted by the reception of objects into

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the unity of that complex occasion which is the process itself.
The process creates itself, but it does not create the objects
which it receives as factors in its own nature.

‘Objects5 for an occasion can also be termed the ‘data5 for
that occasion. The choice of terms entirely depends on the
metaphor which you prefer. One word carries the literal
meaning of Tying in the way of5, and the other word carries
the literal meaning of ‘being given to5. But both words suffer
from the defect of suggesting that an occasion of experiencing
arises out of a passive situation which is a mere welter of
many data.

§ io. Creativity . The exact contrary is the case. The
initial situation includes a factor of activity v/hich is the
reason for the origin of that occasion of experience. This
factor of activity is what I have called ‘Creativity5. The
initial situation with its creativity can be termed the initial
phase of the new occasion. It can equally well be termed
the ‘actual world5 relative to that occasion. It has a certain
unity of its own, expressive of its capacity for providing the
objects requisite for a new occasion, and also expressive of
its conjoint activity whereby it is essentially the primary
phase of a new occasion. It can thus be termed a ‘ real poten¬
tiality5. The ‘potentiality5 refers to the passive capacity, the
term ‘real5 refers to the creative activity, where the Platonic
definition of ‘real5 in the Sophist is referred to. This basic
situation, this actual world, this primary phase, this real
potentiality — however you characterize it — as a whole is
active with its inherent creativity, but in its details it provides
the passive objects which derive their activity from the
creativity of the whole. The creativity is the actualization
of potentiality, and the process of actualization is an occasion
of experiencing. Thus viewed in abstraction, objects are
passive, but viewed in conjunction they carry the creativity

OBJECTS AND SUBJECTS 23I

which drives the world. The process of creation is the form
of unity of the Universe.

§ 11. Perception. In the preceding sections, the discovery
of objects as factors in experience was explained. The dis¬
cussion was phrased in terms of an ontology which goes
beyond the immediate purpose, although the status of objects
cannot be understood in the absence of some such ontology
explaining their function in experience, that is to say, ex¬
plaining why an occasion of experience by reason of its nature
requires objects.

The objects are the factors in experience which function
so as to express that that occasion originates by including a
transcendent universe of other things. Thus it belongs to
the essence of each occasion of experience that it is concerned
with an otherness transcending itself. The occasion is one
among others, and including the others which it is among.
Consciousness is an emphasis upon a selection of these objects.
Thus perception is consciousness analysed in respect to those
objects selected for this emphasis. Consciousness is the acme
of emphasis.

It is evident that this definition of perception is wider than
the narrow definition based upon sense-perception, sensa, and
the bodily sense-organs.

§ 12. Non-Sensuous Perception. This wider definition of
perception can be of no importance unless we can detect
occasions of experience exhibiting modes of functioning which
fall within its wider scope. If we discover such instances
of non-sensuous perception, then the tacit identification of
perception with sense-perception must be a fatal error barring
the advance of systematic metaphysics.

Our first step must involve the clear recognition of the
limitations inherent in the scope of sense-perception. This
special mode of functioning essentially exhibits percepta as

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here , now , immediate , and discrete. Every impression of sensation
is a distinct existence, declares Hume; and there can be no
reasonable doubt of this doctrine. But even Hume clothes
each impression with force and liveliness. It must be distinctly
understood that no prehension, even of bare sensa, can be
divested of its affective tone, that is to say, of its character
of a ‘concern’ in the Quaker sense. Concernedness is of the
essence of perception.

Gaze at a patch of red. In itself as an object, and apart
from other factors of concern, this patch of red, as the mere
object of that present act of perception, is silent as to the
past or the future. How it originates, how it will vanish,
whether indeed there was a past, and whether there will be
a future, are not disclosed by its own nature. No material
for the interpretation of sensa is provided by the sensa them¬
selves, as they stand starkly, barely, present and immediate.
We do interpret them; but no thanks for the feat is due to
them. The epistemologies of the last two hundred years
are employed in the tacit introduction of alien considera¬
tions by the uncritical use of current forms of speech.
A copious use of simple literary forms can thus provide
a philosophy delightful to read, easy to understand, and
entirely fallacious. Yet the usages of language do prove
that our habitual interpretations of these barren sensa are in
the main satisfying to common sense, though in particular
instances liable to error. But the evidence on which these
interpretations are based is entirely drawn from the vast
background and foreground of non-sensuous perception with
which sense-perception is fused, and without which it can
never be. We can discern no clean-cut sense-perception wholly
concerned with present fact.

In human experience, the most compelling example of
non-sensuous perception is our knowledge of our own im-

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233

mediate past. I am not referring to our memories of a day
past, or of an hour past, or of a minute past. Such memories
are blurred and confused by the intervening occasions of
our personal existence. But our immediate past is consti¬
tuted by that occasion, or by that group of fused occasions,
which enters into experience devoid of any perceptible
medium intervening between it and the present immediate
fact. Roughly speaking, it is that portion of our past lying
between a tenth of a second and half a second ago. It is
gone, and yet it is here. It is our indubitable self, the
foundation of our present existence. Yet the present occasion
while claiming self-identity, while sharing the very nature
of the bygone occasion in all its living activities, never¬
theless is engaged in modifying it, in adjusting it to other
influences, in completing it with other values, in deflecting
it to other purposes. The present moment is constituted by
the influx of the other into that self-identity which is the
continued life of the immediate past within the immediacy
of the present.

§ 13. Illustration. Consider a reasonably rapid speaker
enunciating the proper name c United States’. There are four
syllables here. When the third syllable is reached, probably
the first is in the immediate past; and certainly during the
word ‘States’ the first syllable of the phrase lies beyond
the immediacy of the present. Consider the speaker’s own
occasions of existence. Each occasion achieves for him the
immediate sense-presentation of sounds, the earlier syllables
in the earlier occasions, the word ‘States’ in the final
occasion. As mere sensuous perception, Hume is right in
saying that the sound ‘United’ as a mere sensum has nothing
in its nature referent to the sound ‘States’, yet the speaker is
carried from ‘United’ to ‘States’, and the two conjointly live
in the present, by the energizing of the past occasion as it

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ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

claims its self-identical existence as a living issue in the
present. The immediate past as surviving to be again lived
through in the present is the palmary instance of non-
sensuous perception.

The Humian explanation, involving the ‘association of
ideas’, has its importance for this topic. But it is not to the
point for this example. The speaker, a citizen of the United
States and therefore dominated by an immense familiarity
with that phrase, may in fact have been enunciating the
phrase ‘United Fruit Company5 — a corporation which, for
all its importance, he may not have heard of till half a
minute earlier. In his experience the relation of the later to
the earlier parts of this phrase is entirely the same as that
described above for the phrase ‘United States'. In this latter
example it is to be noted that while association would have
led him to ‘States5, the fact of the energizing of the imme¬
diate past compelled him to conjoin ‘Fruit5 in the im¬
mediacy of the present. He uttered the word ‘United5 with
the non-sensuous anticipation of an immediate future with the
sensum ‘Fruit5, and he then uttered the word ‘Fruit5 with
the non-sensuous perception of the immediate past with the
sensum ‘United5. But, unfamiliar as he was with the United
Fruit Company, he had no association connecting the various
words in the phrase ‘United Fruit Company5; while, patriot
as he was, the orator had the strongest association con¬
necting the words ‘United5 and ‘States5. Perhaps, indeed,
he was the founder of the Company, and also invented the
name. He then uttered the mere sounds ‘United Fruit
Company5 for the first time in the history of the English
language. There could not have been the vestige of an
association to help him along. The final occasion of his ex¬
perience which drove his body to the utterance of the sound
‘Company5 is only explicable by his concern with the earlier

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235

occasions with their subjective forms of intention to procure
the utterance of the complete phrase. Also, in so far as there
was consciousness, there was direct observation of the past
with its intention finding its completion in the present fact.
This is an instance of direct intuitive observation which is
incapable of reduction to the sensationalist formula. Such
observations have not the clear sharp-cut precision of sense-
perception. But surely there can be no doubt about them.
For instance, if the speaker had been interrupted after the
words ‘United Fruit’, he might have resumed his speech
with the words ‘I meant to add the word Company’. Thus
during the interruption, the past was energizing in his ex¬
perience as carrying in itself an unfulfilled intention.

§ 14. Conformation of Feeling. Another point emerges in
this explanation, namely, the doctrine of the continuity of
nature. This doctrine balances and limits the doctrine of
the absolute individuality of each occasion of experience.
There is a continuity between the subjective form of the
immediate past occasion and the subjective form of its
primary prehension in the origination of the new occasion.
In the process of synthesis of the many basic prehensions
modifications enter. But the subjective forms of the immediate
past are continuous with those of the present. I will term
this doctrine of continuity, the Doctrine of Conformation of
Feeling.

Suppose that for some period of time some circumstance
of his life has aroused anger in a man. How does he now
know that a quarter of a second ago he was angry? Of
course, he remembers it; we all know that. But I am en¬
quiring about this very curious fact of memory, and have
chosen an overwhelmingly vivid instance. The mere word
‘memory’ explains nothing. The first phase in the imme¬
diacy of the new occasion is that of the conformation of

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236

feelings. The feeling as enjoyed by the past occasion is
present in the new occasion as datum felt, with a subjective
form conformal to that of the datum. Thus if A be the
past occasion, D the datum felt by A with subjective form
describable as A angry, then this feeling — namely, A feeling
D with subjective form of anger — is initially felt by the new
occasion B with the same subjective form of anger. The
anger is continuous throughout the successive occasions of
experience. This continuity of subjective form is the initial
sympathy of B for A. It is the primary ground for the con¬
tinuity of nature.

Let us elaborate the consideration of the angry man. His
anger is the subjective form of his feeling some datum D.
A quarter of a second later he is, consciously, or uncon¬
sciously, embodying his past as a datum in the present, and
maintaining in the present the anger which is a datum from
the past. In so far as that feeling has fallen within the
illumination of consciousness, he enjoys a non-sensuous per¬
ception of the past emotion. He enjoys this emotion both
objectively, as belonging to the past, and also formally, as
continued in the present. This continuation is the continuity
of nature. I have laboured this point, because traditional
doctrines involve its denial.

Thus non-sensuous perception is one aspect of the con¬
tinuity of nature.

§ 15. Hume’s Doctrine of Custom . Hume appeals to a
doctrine of force and liveliness as an essential factor in an
impression of sensation. This doctrine is nothing but a special
case of the doctrine of subjective forms. Again he holds
that the force and liveliness of one occasion of experience
enter into the character of succeeding occasions. The whole
doctrine of ‘custom5 depends on this assumption. If the
occasions be entirely separate, as Hume contends*, this transi-

OBJECTS AND SUBJECTS

237

tion of character is without any basis in the nature of things.
What Hume, in his appeal to memory, is really doing is to
appeal to an observed immanence of the past in the future,
involving a continuity of subjective form.

With this addition, every argument of Part 111 of Hume’s
Treatise can be accepted. But the conclusion follows that
there is an observed relation of causation between such
occasions. The general character of this observed relation
explains at once memory and personal identity. They are all
different aspects of the doctrine of the immanence of occa¬
sions of experience. The additional conclusion can also be
derived, that in so far as we apply notions of causation to the
understanding of events in nature, we must conceive these
events under the general notions which apply to occasions of
experience. For we can only understand causation in terms of
our observations of these occasions. This appeal to Hume has
the sole purpose of illustrating the common-sense obviousness
of the present thesis.

§ 16. The Flux of Energy. An occasion of experience which
includes a human mentality is an extreme instance, at one
end of the scale, of those happenings which constitute nature.
As yet this discussion has fixed attention upon this extreme.
But any doctrine which refuses to place human experience
outside nature, must find in descriptions of human ex¬
perience factors which also enter into the descriptions of less
specialized natural occurrences. If there be no such factors,
then the doctrine of human experience as a fact within
nature is mere bluff, founded upon vague phrases whose sole
merit is a comforting familiarity. We should either admit
dualism, at least as a provisional doctrine, or we should point
out the identical elements connecting human experience with
physical science.

The science of physics conceives a natural occasion as a

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238

locus of energy. Whatever else that occasion may be, it is
an individual fact harbouring that energy. The words elec¬
tron, proton, photon, wave-motion, velocity, hard and soft
radiation, chemical elements, matter, empty space, tempera¬
ture, degradation of energy, all point to the fact that physical
science recognizes qualitative differences between occasions
in respect to the way in which each occasion entertains its
energy.

These differences are entirely constituted by the flux of
energy, that is to say, by the way in which the occasions
in question have inherited their energy from the past of
nature, and in which they are about to transmit their energy
to the future. The discussion of the Poynting Flux of Energy
is one of the most fascinating chapters of Electrodynamics.
Forty-seven years ago, when a young graduate student, I
first heard of it in a lecture delivered by Sir J. J. Thomson.
It was then a new discovery recently published by Poynting.
But its father was the great Clerk-Maxwell who had ex¬
pounded all the requisite principles. The sole conclusion
with which we are concerned is that energy has recognizable
paths through time and space. Energy passes from particular
occasion to particular occasion. At each point there is a flux,
with a quantitative flow and a definite direction.

This is a conception of physical nature in terms of con¬
tinuity. In fact, the concept of continuity was dominant in
Clerk-Maxwell’s thought. But the alternative concept of
distinguishable individualities has again emerged into im¬
portance in the more recent physics. Electrons and protons
and photons are unit charges of electricity; also there are
the quanta of the flux of energy. These contrasted aspects
of nature, continuity, and atomicity, have a long history in
European thought, reaching back to the origin of science
among the Greeks. The more probable conclusion is that

OBJECTS AND SUBJECTS

239

neither can be dispensed with, and that we are only witnessing
that modern phase of the contrast which is relevant to the
present stage of science.

§ 17. Mind and Nature Compared. The doctrine of human
experience which I have outlined above, also for its own
purposes preserves a doctrine of distinguishable individualities
which are the separate occasions of experience, and a doc¬
trine of continuity expressed by the identity of subjective
form inherited conformally from one occasion to the other.
The physical flux corresponds to the conformal inheritance
at the base of each occasion of experience. This inheritance,
in spite of its continuity of subjective form, is nevertheless
an inheritance from definite individual occasions. Thus, if
the analogy is to hold, in the account of the general system
of relations binding the past to the present, we should
expect a doctrine of quanta, where the individualities of
the occasions are relevant, and a doctrine of continuity
where the conformal transference of subjective form is the
dominating fact.

The notion of physical energy, which is at the base of
physics, must then be conceived as an abstraction from the
complex energy, emotional and purposeful, inherent in the
subjective form of the final synthesis in which each occasion
completes itself. It is the total vigour of each activity of
experience. The mere phrase that ‘physical science is an
abstraction’, is a confession of philosophic failure. It is the
business of rational thought to describe the more concrete
fact from which that abstraction is derivable.

§ 18. Personality. In our account of human experience
we have attenuated human personality into a genetic rela¬
tion between occasions of human experience. Yet personal
unity is an inescapable fact. The Platonic and Christian doc¬
trine of the Soul, the Epicurean doctrine of a Concilium of

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ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

subtle atoms, the Cartesian doctrine of Thinking Substance,
the Humanitarian doctrine of the Rights of man, the general
Common Sense of civilized mankind — these doctrines be¬
tween them dominate the whole span of Western thought.
Evidently there is a fact to be accounted for. Any philosophy
must provide some doctrine of personal identity. In some
sense there is a unity in the life of each man, from birth to
death. The two modern philosophers who most consistently
reject the notion of a self-identical Soul-Substance are Hume
and William James. But the problem remains for them, as
it does for the philosophy of organism, to provide an adequate
account of this undoubted personal unity, maintaining itself
amidst the welter of circumstance.

§ 19. Plato's Receptacle. In mathematical studies, where
there is a problem to be solved it is a sound method to
generalize, so as to divest the problem of details irrelevant to
the solution. Let us therefore give a general description of
this personal unity, divesting it of minor details of humanity.
For this purpose it is impossible to improve upon a passage
from one of Plato’s Dialogues. I summarize it with the
insertion of such terms as ‘personal unity’, ‘events’, ‘ex¬
perience’, and ‘personal identity’, for two or three of its own
phrases: “In addition to the notions of the welter of events
and of the forms which they illustrate, we require a third
term, personal unity. It is a perplexed and obscure concept.
We must conceive it the receptacle, the foster-mother as I
might say, of the becoming of our occasions of experience.
This personal identity is the thing which receives all occa¬
sions of the man’s existence. It is there as a natural matrix
for all transitions of life, and is changed and variously
figured by the things that enter it; so that it differs in its
character at different times. Since it receives all manner of
experiences into its own unity, it must itself be bare of all

OBJECTS AND SUBJECTS

241

forms. We shall not be far wrong if we describe it as in¬
visible, formless, and all-receptive. It is a locus which per¬
sists, and provides an emplacement for all the occasions of
experience. That which happens in it is conditioned by the
compulsion of its own past, and by the persuasion of its
immanent ideals”.

You will have recognized that in this description I have
been adapting from Plato’s Timaeus ,l with the slightest of
changes. But this is not Plato’s description of the Soul. It is
his doctrine of the Receptacle [wt-oSo^] or Locus [xcopa]
whose sole function is the imposition of a unity upon the
events of nature. These events are together by reason of their
community of locus, and they obtain their actuality by reason
of emplacement within this community.

§ 20. Immanence. This is at once the doctrine of the unity
of nature, and of the unity of each human life. The conclusion
follows that our consciousness of the self-identity pervading
our life-thread of occasions is nothing other than knowledge
of a special strand of unity within the general unity of
nature. It is a locus within the whole, marked out by its own
peculiarities, but otherwise exhibiting the general principle
which guides the constitution of the whole. This general
principle is the object-to-subject structure of experience. It
can be otherwise stated as the vector-structure of nature.
Or otherwise, it can be conceived as the doctrine of the
immanence of the past energizing in the present.

This doctrine of immanence is practically that doctrine
adumbrated by the Hellenistic Christian theologians of
Egypt. But they applied the doctrine only to the relation of
God to the World, and not to all actualities.

§ 21. Space and Time. The notion of Space-Time repre-

1 I have used A. E. Taylor’s translation, with compression and changes of
phrase.

wi

16

242 ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

sents a compromise between Plato’s basic Receptacle, im¬
posing no forms, and the Actual World imposing its own
variety of forms. This imposition of forms is subject to the
perspective elimination required by incompatibilities of affec¬
tive tone. Geometry is the doctrine of loci of intermediaries
imposing perspective in the process of inheritance. In
geometry this doctrine is restricted to its barest generalities
of co-ordination prevailing for this epoch of the Uni¬
verse. These generalities solely concern the complex of
serial relations persistently illustrated in the connection of
events.

Our perception of this geometrical order of the Universe
brings with it the denial of the restriction of inheritance
to mere personal order. For personal order means one¬
dimensional serial order. And space is many-dimensional.
Spatiality involves separation by reason of the diversity of
intermediate occasions, and also it involves connection by
reason of the immanence involved in the derivation of
present from past. There is thus an analogy between the
transference of energy from particular occasion to particular
occasion in physical nature and the transference of affective
tone, with its emotional energy, from one occasion to another
in any human personality. The object-to-subject structure
of human experience is reproduced in physical nature by
this vector relation of particular to particular. It was the
defect of the Greek analysis of generation that it conceived
it in terms of the bare incoming of novel abstract form.
This ancient analysis failed to grasp the real operation of
the antecedent particulars imposing themselves on the novel
particular in process of creation. Thus the geometry ex¬
emplified in fact was disjoined from their account of the
generation of fact.

§ 22. The Human Body. But this analogy of physical

OBJECTS AND SUBJECTS

243

nature to human experience is limited by the fact of the linear
seriality of human occasions within any one personality and
of the many-dimensional seriality of the occasions in physical
Space-Time.

In order to prove that this discrepancy is only superficial,
it now remains for discussion whether the human ex¬
perience of direct inheritance provides any analogy to this
many-dimensional character of space. If human occasions
of experience essentially inherit in one-dimensional personal
order, there is a gap between human occasions and the
physical occasions of nature.

The peculiar status of the human body at once presents
itself as negating this notion of strict personal order for
human inheritance. Our dominant inheritance from our
immediately past occasion is broken into by innumerable
inheritances through other avenues. Sensitive nerves, the
functionings of our viscera, disturbances in the composition
of our blood, break in upon the dominant line of inheritance.
In this way, emotions, hopes, fears, inhibitions, sense-per¬
ceptions, arise, which physiologists confidently ascribe to
the bodily functionings. So intimately obvious is this bodily
inheritance that common speech does not discriminate the
human body from the human person. Soul and body are
fused together. Also this common identification has survived
the scientific investigation of physiologists, who are apt to see
more body than soul in human beings.

But the human body is indubitably a complex of occasions
which are part of spatial nature. It is a set of occasions
miraculously co-ordinated so as to pour its inheritance
into various regions within the brain. There is thus every
reason to believe that our sense of unity with the body has
the same original as our sense of unity with our immediate
past of personal experience. It is another case of non-

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ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

sensuous perception, only now devoid of the strict personal
order.

But physiologists and physicists are equally agreed that
the body inherits physical conditions from the physical en¬
vironment according to the physical laws. There is thus a
general continuity between human experience and physical
occasions. The elaboration of such a continuity is one most
obvious task for philosophy.

§ 23. Dualism. This discussion has begged attention to a
complex argument. I will conclude it by drawing attention
to a general question which is relevant.

Is this discussion to be looked upon as another example
of The Revolt against Dualism ? We have all read with high
appreciation Professor Lovejoy’s brilliant book in criticism
of this revolt. Now superficially the position which I have
here put forward is certainly an instance of the revolt which
he criticizes. But in another sense I have endeavoured to
put forward a defence of dualism, differently interpreted.
Plato, Descartes, Locke, prepared the way for Hume; and
Kant followed upon Hume. The point of this discussion
is to show an alternative line of thought which evades
Hume’s deduction from philosophical tradition, and at the
same time preserves the general trend of thought received
from his three great predecessors. The dualism in the later
Platonic dialogues between the Platonic ‘souls’ and the
Platonic c physical ’ nature, the dualism between the Cartesian
‘ thinking substances ’ and the Cartesian ‘ extended sub¬
stances ’, the dualism between the Lockian ‘human under¬
standing’ and the Lockian ‘external things’ described for
him by Galileo and Newton — all these kindred dualisms
are here found within each occasion of actuality. Each
occasion has its physical inheritance and its mental reaction
which drives it on to its self-completion. The 'world is not

OBJECTS AND SUBJECTS

245

merely physical, nor is it merely mental. Nor is it merely one
with many subordinate phases. Nor is it merely a complete
fact, in its essence static with the illusion of change. Wherever
a vicious dualism appears, it is by reason of mistaking an
abstraction for a final concrete fact.

The Universe is dual because, in the fullest sense, it is both
transient and eternal. The Universe is dual because each final
actuality is both physical and mental. The Universe is dual be¬
cause each actuality requires abstract character. The Universe
is dual because each occasion unites its formal immediacy
with objective otherness. The Universe is many because it
is wholly and completely to be analysed into many final
actualities — or in Cartesian language, into many res verae.
The Universe is one , because of the universal immanence.
There is thus a dualism in this contrast between the unity
and multiplicity. Throughout the Universe there reigns the
union of opposites which is the ground of dualism.

CHAPTER XII

PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE

Section I. The doctrine of the immanence of past occa¬
sions in the occasions which are future, relatively to them,
has been sufficiently discussed in the previous chapter. The
past has an objective existence in the present which lies in
the future beyond itself. But the sense in which the future
can be said to be immanent in occasions antecedent to itself,
and the sense in which contemporary occasions are im¬
manent in each other, are not so evident in terms of the
doctrine of the subject-object structure of experience. It will
be simpler first to concentrate upon the relation of the
future to the present. It is evident that the future certainly
is something for the present. The most familiar habits of
mankind witness to this fact Legal contracts, social under¬
standings of every type, ambitions, anxieties, railway time¬
tables, are futile gestures of consciousness apart from the
fact that the present bears in its own realized constitution
relationships to a future beyond itself. Cut away the future,
and the present collapses, emptied of its proper content.
Immediate existence requires the insertion of the future in
the crannies of the present.

Here again the habits of a literary training with its long-
range forecast and back-cast of critical thought exercise
an unfortunate effect upon philosophy. We think of the
future in time-spans of centuries, or of decades, or of years,
or of days. We dwell critically upon the mass of fables

PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE

247

termed history. As a result we conceive ourselves as related
to past or to future by a mere effort of purely abstract
imagination, devoid of direct observation of particular fact.
If we admit this conclusion, there is no real evidence that
there was a past, or that there will be a future. Our ignorance
on this point is complete. All that we can observe consists of
conceptual persuasions in the present. Such is the outcome
of the literary habit of dwelling upon the long future or
upon the long past. Literature preserves the wisdom of the
human race; but in this way it enfeebles the emphasis of
first-hand intuition. In considering our direct observation of
past, or of future, we should confine ourselves to time-spans
of the order of magnitude of a second, or even of fractions
of a second.

Section II. If we keep ourselves to this short-range in¬
tuition, assuredly the future is not nothing. It lives actively
in its antecedent world. Each moment of experience con¬
fesses itself to be a transition between two worlds, the
immediate past and the immediate future. This is the per¬
sistent delivery of common sense. Also this immediate
future is immanent in the present with some degree of
structural definition. The difficulty lies in the explanation
of this immanence in terms of the subject-object structure
of experience. In the present, the future occasions, as indi¬
vidual realities with their measure of absolute completeness,
are non-existent. Thus the future must be immanent in the
present in some different sense to the objective immortality of
the individual occasions of the past. In the present there are
no individual occasions belonging to the future. The present
contains the utmost verge of such realized individuality. The
whole doctrine of the future is to be understood in terms of the
account of the process of self-completion of each individual
actual occasion.

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

248

This process can be shortly characterized as a passage
from re-enaction to anticipation. The intermediate stage in
this transition is constituted by the acquisition of novel con¬
tent, which is the individual contribution of the immediate
subject for the re-shaping of its primary phase of re-enaction
into its final phase of anticipation. This final phase is other¬
wise termed the ‘satisfaction5, since it marks the exhaustion
of the creative urge for that individuality. This novel content
is composed of positive conceptual prehensions, that is to
say, of conceptual feelings. These conceptual feelings become
integrated with the physical prehensions of antecedent oc¬
casions, and thus yield propositions concerning the past.
These propositions are again integrated and re-integrated
with each other and with conceptual feelings, and yield other
propositions.

Finally propositions emerge concerning the constitution
of the immediate subject. It belongs to the essence of this
subject that it pass into objective immortality. Thus its own
constitution involves that its own activity in ^//'-formation
passes into its activity of o^rr-formation. It is by reason
of the constitution of the present subject that the future
will embody the present subject and will re-enact its patterns
of activity. But the future individual occasions are non¬
existent. The sole immediate actuality is the constitution
of the present subject which embodies its own necessity
for objective immortality beyond its own immediacy of
self-formation. This objective immortality is a stubborn
fact for the future, involving its pattern of perspective
re-enaction.

The final phase of anticipation is a propositional realiza¬
tion of the essence of the present-subject, in respect to
the necessities which it lays upon the future to embody it
and to re-enact it so far as compatibility may permit. Thus

PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE

249

the self-enjoyment of an occasion of experience is initiated by
an enjoyment of the past as alive in itself and is terminated
by an enjoyment of itself as alive in the future. This is the
account of the creative urge of the Universe as it functions
in each single individual occasion. In this sense, the future
is immanent in each present occasion, with its particular
relations to the present settled in various degrees of domin¬
ance. But no future individual occasion is in existence. The
anticipatory propositions all concern the constitution of the
present occasion and the necessities inherent in it. This con¬
stitution necessitates that there be a future, and necessitates
a quota of contribution for re-enaction in the primary phases
of future occasions.

The point to remember is that the fact that each indi¬
vidual occasion is transcended by the creative urge, belongs
to the essential constitution of each such occasion. It is not
an accident which is irrelevant to the completed constitution
of any such occasion.

In the formation of each occasion of actuality the swing
over from re-enaction to anticipation is due to the intervening
touch of mentality. Whether the ideas thus introduced by
the novel conceptual prehension be old or new, they have
this decisive result, that the occasion arises as an effect facing
its past and ends as a cause facing its future. In between
there lies the teleology of the Universe.

If the mental activity involves no introduction of ideal
novelty, the data of the conceptual feelings are merely
eternal objects already illustrated in the initial phase of re¬
enaction. In that case, the re-integration with the primary
phase merely converts the initial conformal reception into the
anticipation of preservation of types of order and of patterns
of feeling already dominant in the inheritance. There is a
reign of acquiescence. In this way, a region of such occa-

250

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

sions assumes the aspect of passive submission to imposed
laws of nature. But when there is conceptual novelty made
effective by its re-iteration and by the added emphasis on
it throughout a chain of co-ordinated occasions, we have
the aspect of an enduring person with a sustained purpose
originated by that person and made effective in that per¬
son’s environment. Thus in this case the anticipation of
kinship with the future assumes the form of purpose to
transform concept into fact. In either case, whether or no
there be conceptual novelty, the subjective forms of the
conceptual prehensions constitute the drive of the Uni¬
verse, whereby each occasion precipitates itself into the
future.

Section III. It is now possible to determine the sense in
which the future is immanent in the present. The future
is immanent in the present by reason of the fact that the
present bears in its own essence the relationships which it
will have to the future. It thereby includes in its essence the
necessities to which the future must conform. The future
is there in the present, as a general fact belonging to the
nature of things. It is also there with such general deter¬
minations as it lies in the nature of the particular present
to impose on the particular future which must succeed it.
All this belongs to the essence of the present, and constitutes
the future, as thus determined, an object for prehension in
the subjective immediacy of the present. In this way each
present occasion prehends the general metaphysical character
of the Universe, and thereby it prehends its own share in
that character. Thus the future is to the present as an
object for a subject. It has an objective existence in the
present. But the objective existence of the future in the
present differs from the objective existence of the past in
the present. The various particular occasions* of the past

PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE

251

are in existence, and are severally functioning as objects
for prehension in the present. This individual objective
existence of the actual occasions of the past, each functioning
in each present occasion, constitutes the causal relationship
which is efficient causation. But there are no actual occasions
in the future, already constituted. Thus there are no actual
occasions in the future to exercise efficient causation in the
present. What is objective in the present is the necessity
of a future of actual occasions, and the necessity that these
future occasions conform to the conditions inherent in the
essence of the present occasion. The future belongs to the
essence of present fact, and has no actuality other than
the actuality of present fact. But its particular relation¬
ships to present fact are already realized in the nature of
present fact.

Section IV. It is the definition of contemporary events
that they happen in causal independence of each other.
Thus two contemporary occasions are such that neither
belongs to the past of the other. The two occasions are not
in any direct relation of efficient causation. The vast causal
independence of contemporary occasions is the preservative
of the elbow-room within the Universe. It provides each
actuality with a welcome environment for irresponsibility.
‘Am I my brother’s keeper?5 expresses one of the earliest
gestures of self-consciousness. Our claim for freedom is
rooted in our relationship to our contemporary environment.
Nature does provide a field for independent activities. The
understanding of the Universe requires that we conceive
in their proper relations to each other the various roles, of
efficient causation, of teleological self-creation, and of con¬
temporary independence. This adequate conception requires
also understanding of perspective elimination, and of types
of order dominating vast epochs, and of minor endurances

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

252

with their own additional modes of order diversifying each
larger epoch within which they find themselves.

The mutual independence of contemporary occasions lies
strictly within the sphere of their teleological self-creation.
The occasions originate from a common past and their ob¬
jective immortality operates within a common future. Thus
indirectly, via the immanence of the past and the immanence
of the future, the occasions are connected. But the immediate
activity of self-creation is separate and private, so far as
contemporaries are concerned.

There is thus a certain indirect immanence of contemporary
occasions in each other. For if A and B be contemporaries,
and C be in the past of both of them, then A and B are each
in a sense immanent in G, in the way in which the future
can be immanent in its past. But G is objectively immortal
in both A and B. Thus, in this indirect sense, A is immanent
in B, and B is immanent in A. But the objective immortality
of A does not operate in B, nor does that of B operate in A.
As individual complete actualities, A is shrouded from B,
and B is shrouded from A. It is not wholly true that two
contemporaries A and B enjoy a common past. In the first
place, even if the occasions in the past of A be identical
with the occasions in the past of B, yet A and B by reason
of their difference of status, enjoy that past under a difference
of perspective elimination. Thus the objective immortality
of the past in A differs from the objective immortality of
that same past in B. Thus two contemporary occasions,
greatly remote from each other, are in effect derived from
different pasts.

Again, according to the notions of time recently developed
in modern physics, if A and B are contemporaries and P
is contemporary with A, then it is not necessarily true that
P is contemporary with B. It is possible that P may be

PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE

253

earlier than B, or that it may be later than B. Thus even the
occasions in the past of A are not wholly identical with those
in the past of B. When A and B are neighbouring, then this
distinction between their pasts may be negligible. But when
they are remote from each other, the distinction may be of
major importance.

It follows from this discussion that in so far as the relevant
environment is dominated by any uniform type of co-ordi¬
nation, any occasion will experience its past as ‘anticipating’
the prolongation of that type of order into the future beyond
that past. But this future includes the occasion in question
and its contemporary environment. In this way there is
an indirect immanence of its contemporary world in that
occasion; not in respect to its particular individual occa¬
sions, but as the general substratum for that relation of
order. This type of order will both relate the various parts
of the contemporary world among themselves, and will
also relate these parts to the occasion in question. But the
parts of the contemporary world will only belong to the
experience of the occasion in their function of relata for
this type of order. This is the general explanation why
the contemporary world should be perceived as the field of
the uniform spatial relations. It gives no reason why any
special system of relationships should dpminate this epoch.
But the explanation does give a reason why some system
of uniform relations should dominate our perceptions of the
contemporary world. Also the intrinsic activity has been
lost. The contemporary world enters into experience as the
passive subject of relations and qualities.

Section V. The actualities of the Universe are processes
of experience, each process an individual fact. The whole
Universe is the advancing assemblage of these processes.
The Aristotelian doctrine, that all agency is confined to

254

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

actuality, is accepted. So also is the Platonic dictum that
the very meaning of existence is ‘to be a factor in agency5,
or in other words ‘to make a difference5. Thus, ‘to be some¬
thing 5 is to be discoverable as a factor in the analysis of some
actuality. It follows that in one sense everything is ‘real5,
according to its own category of being. In this sense the
word ‘real5 can only mean that some sound or mark is a
word with a denotation. But the term ‘realization5 refers to
the actual entities which include the entity in question as
a positive factor in their constitutions. Thus though every¬
thing is real, it is not necessarily realized in some particular
set of actual occasions. But it is necessary that it be dis¬
coverable somewhere, realized in some actual entity. There
is not anything which has failed in some sense to be realized,
physically or conceptually. The term ‘real5 can also mark
the differences arising in the contrast between physical and
conceptual realization.

Section VI. Any set of actual occasions are united by
the mutual immanence of occasions, each in the other. To
the extent that they are united they mutually constrain each
other. Evidently this mutual immanence and constraint of
a pair of occasions is not in general a symmetric relation.
For, apart from contemporaries, one occasion will be in the
future of the other. Thus the earlier will be immanent in
the later according to the mode of efficient causality, and the
later in the earlier according to the mode of anticipation,
as explained above. Any set of occasions, conceived as thus
combined into a unity, will be termed a nexus. The unity of
such a nexus may be of a trivial description, if the various
occasions are dispersed through the Universe, each with a
widely different status from the other. When the unity of
the nexus is of dominating importance, nexus of different
types emerge, which may be respectively termed Regions,

PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE

255

Societies, Persons, Enduring Objects, Corporal Substances,
Living Organisms, Events, with other analogous terms for
the various shades of complexity of which Nature is capable.
It will be sufficient in the next chapter to indicate a few of
these special types of nexus.

Section VII. We think of Constraint and Freedom in
terms of the values realized in connection with them, and
also in terms of the antithesis between them. But there is
another way of considering them. We can ask what there
is in the physical nature of things constituting the physical
realization either of freedom, or of constraint, or of a com¬
patible association of both in a suitable pattern.

In fact we do habitually interpret human history in terms
of freedom and constraint. Apart from the realization of
this antithesis in physical occurrences, the history of civilized
humanity is a meaningless succession of events, involving a
play of emotions concerned with concepts entirely irrelevant
to the physical facts.

The causal independence of contemporary occasions is the
ground for the freedom within the Universe. The novelties
which face the contemporary world are solved in isolation
by the contemporary occasions. There is complete con¬
temporary freedom. It is not true that whatever happens
is immediately a condition laid upon everything else. Such
a conception of complete mutual determination is an ex¬
aggeration of the community of the Universe. The notions of
4 sporadic occurrences 5 and of c mutual irrelevance 5 have a real
application to the nature of things. Again the perspective
imposed by incompatibilities of subjective form in another
way provides for freedom. The antecedent environment is
not wholly efficacious in determining the initial phase of the
occasion which springs from it. There are factors in the
environment which are eliminated from any function as

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

256

explicit facts in the new creation. The running stream purifies
itself, or perhaps loses some virtue which in happier circum¬
stances might have been retained. The initial phase of each
fresh occasion represents the issue of a struggle within the
past for objective existence beyond itself. The determinant of
the struggle is the supreme Eros incarnating itself as the first
phase of the individual subjective aim in the new process
of actuality. Thus in any two occasions of the Universe
there are elements in either one which are irrelevant to the
constitution of the other. The forgetfulness of this doctrine
leads to an over-moralization in the view of the nature of
things. Fortunately there are a great many things which do
not much matter, and we can have them how we will. The
opposite point of view has been the nursery of fanaticism,
and has tinged history with ferocity.

Section VIII. The understanding of the Universe, in
terms of the type of metaphysic here put forward, requires
that the various roles of efficient causation, of teleological
self-creation, of perspective elimination, of contemporary in¬
dependence, of the laws of order dominating vast epochs, and
of the minor endurances within each epoch, be conceived
in their various relations to each other. Another summary
expression of this type of understanding is contained in the
phrases, Constraint and Freedom, Survival and Destruction,
Depth of Feeling and Triviality of Feeling, Conceptual
realization and Physical realization, Appearance and Reality.
Any account of the Adventure of Ideas is concerned with
Ideas threading their way among the alternatives presented
by these various phrases.

When we examine the structure of the epoch of the Uni¬
verse in which we find ourselves, this structure exhibits suc¬
cessive layers of types of order, each layer introducing some
additional type of order within some limited region which

PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE

257

shares in the more general type of order of some larger
environment. Also this larger environment in its turn is a
specialized region within the general epoch of creation as
we know it. Each one of these regions, with its dominant
set of ordering relations, can either be considered from the
point of view of the mutual relations of its parts to each
other, or it can be considered from the point of view of its
impact, as a unity, upon the experience of an external per¬
cipient. There is yet a third mode of consideration which
combines the other two. The percipient may be an occasion
within the region, and may yet grasp the region as one,
including the percipient itself as a member of it.

A region, analysed in the first way, is thereby conceived
as subject to certain Laws of Nature, which laws are its
dominant set of ordering relations. In the second mode of
consideration, synthesis replaces analysis. The region in ques¬
tion assumes the guise of an enduring unity, of which the
essence is a certain complex internal character. This essential
character, as it appears in the second approach, is nothing
other than the set of Laws of Nature reigning within the
region, as they appear in the first approach. Either mode
of approach simply lays stress upon the dominant identity
of character pervading the concrete connexity of the many
occasions constituting the region. The unity of the region is
two-fold : first, by reason of the sheer connexity arising from
the mutual immanence of the various occasions included
in it, and secondly, by reason of a pervasive identity of
character whereby the various parts play an analogous role
in any external occasion. Thus the region with its Laws
of Nature is a synonym for the enduring substance with its
Essential Character.

wi

17

CHAPTER Xin

THE GROUPING OF OCCASIONS

Section I. The Grouping of Occasions is the outcome of
some common function performed by those occasions in the
percipient experience. The grouped occasions then acquire
a unity; they become, for the experience of the percipient,
one thing which is complex by reason of its divisibility
into many occasions, or into many subordinate groups of
occasions. The subordinate groups are then complex
unities, each belonging to the same metaphysical category
of existence as the total group. This characteristic, namely
divisibility into groups of analogous type of being, is the
general notion of extensiveness. The peculiar relationships
(if any) diffused systematically between the extensive groups
of an epoch constitute the system of geometry prevalent in
that epoch.

The general common function exhibited by any group of
actual occasions is that of mutual immanence. In Platonic
language, this is the function of belonging to a common
Receptacle. If the group be considered merely in respect to
this basic property of mutual immanence, however otherwise
lacking in common relevance, then — conceived as exempli¬
fying this general connectedness — the group is termed a
Nexus.

Thus the term Nexus does not presuppose any special type
of order, nor does it presuppose any order at all pervading
its members other than the general metaphysical obliga-

THE GROUPING OF OCCASIONS 259

tion of mutual immanence. But in fact the teleology of
the Universe, with its aim at intensity and variety, produces
epochs with various types of order dominating subordinate
nexus interwoven with each other. A nexus can spread
itself both spatially and temporally. In other words, it can
include sets of occasions which are contemporary with each
other, and it can include sets which are relatively past and
future. If the nexus be purely spatial, then it will include
no pair of occasions such that one of the pair is antecedent
to the other. The mutual immanence between the occasions
of the nexus will then be of the indirect type proper to con¬
temporary occasions. It is for this reason that the notion of
externality dominates our intuition of space. If the nexus be
purely temporal, then it will include no pair of contemporary
occasions. It is to be a mere thread of temporal transition
from occasion to occasion. The idea of temporal transition
can never be wholly disengaged from that of ‘causation5.
This latter notion is merely a special way of considering
direct immanence of the past in its future.

Section II. The notion of the contiguity of occasions is
important. Two occasions, which are not contemporary, are
contiguous in time when there is no occasion which is
antecedent to one of them and subsequent to the other. A
purely temporal nexus of occasions is continuous when, with
the exception of the earliest and the latest occasions, each
occasion is contiguous with an earlier occasion and a later
occasion. The nexus will then form an unbroken thread in
temporal or serial order. The first and the last occasions of
the thread will, of course, only enjoy a one-sided contiguity
with the thread.

Spatial contiguity is more difficult to define. It requires a
reference to the temporal dimension. It can be defined by
the aid of the doctrine that no two contemporary occasions

17-2

26o

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

are derived from a past wholly in common. Thus if A and
B be two contemporary occasions, the past of A includes
some occasions not belonging to the past of B, and that of
B includes occasions not belonging to the past of A. Then
A and B are contiguous when there is no occasion (i) con¬
temporary with both A and B, and (ii) such that its past
includes all occasions, each belonging both to the past of A
and the past of B. The particular form of this definition is
of no great importance. But the principle that the inter¬
relations of the present are derived from a reference to the
past is fundamental. It gives the reason why the contem¬
porary world is experienced as a display of lifeless substances
passively illustrating imposed characters.

Anyhow contiguity, temporal and spatial, is definable in
terms of the doctrine of immanence. By the aid of the
notion of contiguity, the notion of a region can be defined
as denoting a nexus in which certain conditions of contiguity
are preserved. The logical details of such a definition are
irrelevant to this discussion.

So far we have been considering various species of nexus,
whose sole principle of unity is derived from the bare fact
of mutual immanence. We will term this genus of nexus,
the genus whose species are discriminated by differences of
bare extensive pattern. More briefly, it will be termed the
Genus of Patterned Nexus. Every nexus belongs to some species
of this genus, if we abstract from the qualitative factors which
are interwoven in its patterns.

Section III. We now pass on to the general notion of a
Society. This notion introduces the general consideration of
types of order, and the genetic propagation of order. The
definition depends upon taking into account factors which are
omitted in the analysis of the Genus of Patterned Nexus.

A Society is a nexus which ‘illustrates5 or ‘shares in’, some

THE GROUPING OF OCCASIONS 26l

type of ‘Social Order’. ‘Social Order’ can be defined1 as
follows: ‘A nexus enjoys “social order” when (i) there is a
common element of form illustrated in the definiteness of
each of its included actual entities, and (ii) this common
element of form arises in each member of the nexus by reason
of the conditions imposed upon it by its prehensions of some
other members of the nexus, and (iii) these prehensions
impose that condition of reproduction by reason of their
inclusion of positive feelings involving2 that common form.
Such a nexus is called a “society”, and the common form
is the “defining characteristic” of that society’.

Another rendering3 of the same definition is as follows:
‘The point of a “society” as the term is here used, is that
it is self-sustaining; in other words, that it is its own reason.
Thus a society is more than a set of [actual] entities to
which the same class-name applies : that is to say, it involves
more than a merely mathematical conception of “order”. To
constitute a society, the class-name has got to apply to each
member, by reason of genetic derivation from other members
of that same society. The members of the society are alike
because, by reason of their common character, they impose
on other members of the society the conditions which lead
to that likeness’.

It is evident from this description of the notion of a
‘Society’, as here employed, that a set of mutually contem¬
porary occasions cannot form a complete society. For the
genetic condition cannot be satisfied by such a set of contem¬
poraries. Of course a set of contemporaries may belong to a
society. But the society, as such, must involve antecedents
and subsequents. In other words, a society must exhibit the

1 Cf. Process and Reality , Part 1, Chapter iii. Section II.

2 In the original, Process and Reality , ‘of that’ in place of ‘involving*.

3 Cf. Process and Reality , Part 11, Chapter in, Section II.

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ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

peculiar quality of endurance. The real actual things that
endure are all societies. They are not actual occasions. It is
the mistake that has thwarted European metaphysics from
the time of the Greeks, namely, to confuse societies with
the completely real things which are the actual occasions.
A society has an essential character, whereby it is the society
that it is, and it has also accidental qualities which vary as
circumstances alter. Thus a society, as a complete existence
and as retaining the same metaphysical status, enjoys a
history expressing its changing reactions to changing circum¬
stances.1 But an actual occasion has no such history. It never
changes. It only becomes and perishes. Its perishing is its
assumption of a new metaphysical function in the creative
advance of the universe.

The self-identity of a society is founded upon the self-
identity of its defining characteristic, and upon the mutual
immanence of its occasions. But there is no definite nexus
which is the nexus underlying that society, except when the
society belongs wholly to the past. For the realized nexus
which underlies the society is always adding to itself, with
the creative advance into the future. For example, the man
adds another day to his life, and the earth adds another
millennium to the period of its existence. But until the
death of the man and the destruction of the earth, there is
no determinate nexus which in an unqualified sense is either
the man or the earth.

Section IV. Though there is no one nexus which can
claim to be the society, so long as that society is in existence,
there is a succession of nexus each of which is the whole
realized society up to that stage of its existence. The ex¬
tensive patterns of various members of such a succession for a

1 This notion of ‘society’ has analogies to Descartes’ notion of ‘substance’,
cf. Descartes’ Principles of Philosophy , Part 1, Principles LI-LVH.

THE GROUPING OF OCCASIONS 263

given society may be different. In such a case the extensive
patterns, so far as they differ, cannot be any element in the
defining characteristic of the society. But the extensive pat¬
terns of the various nexus of the succession may be identical,
or at least they may have in common some feature of their
pattern. In this case the common pattern, or the common
feature, can be one element in the defining characteristic of
the society in question.

The simplest example of a society in which the successive
nexus of its progressive realization have a common extensive
pattern is when each such nexus is purely temporal and
continuous. The society, in each stage of realization, then
consists of a set of contiguous occasions in serial order. A man,
defined as an enduring percipient, is such a society. This
definition of a man is exactly what Descartes means by a
thinking substance. It will be remembered that in his Prin¬
ciples of Philosophy [Part i, Principle XXI; also Meditation III]
Descartes states that endurance is nothing else than suc¬
cessive re-creation by God. Thus the Cartesian conception
of the human soul and that here put forward differ only in
the function assigned to God. Both conceptions involve a
succession of occasions, each with its measure of immediate
completeness.

Societies of the general type, that their realized nexus are
purely temporal and continuous, will be termed ‘personal’.
Any society of this type may be termed a ‘person’. Thus, as
defined above, a man is a person.

But a man is more than a serial succession of occasions
of experience. Such a definition may satisfy philosophers —
Descartes, for example. It is not the ordinary meaning of
the term ‘man’. There are animal bodies as well as animal
minds; and in our experience such minds always occur
incorporated. Now an animal body is a society involving

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

264

a vast number of occasions, spatially and temporally co¬
ordinated. It follows that a ‘man5, in the full sense of
ordinary usage, is not a ‘person’ as here defined. He has the
unity of a wider society, in which the social co-ordination is
a dominant factor in the behaviours of the various parts.

Also, when we survey the living world, animal and
vegetable, there are bodies of all types. Each living body is
a society, which is not personal. But most of the animals,
including all the vertebrates, seem to have their social system
dominated by a subordinate society which is ‘personal’. This
subordinate society is of the same type as ‘man’, according
to the personal definition given above, though of course the
mental poles in the occasions of the dominant personal
society do not rise to the height of human mentality. Thus
in one sense a dog is a ‘person’, and in another sense he is
a non-personal society. But the lower forms of animal life,
and all vegetation, seem to lack the dominance of any in¬
cluded personal society. A tree is a democracy. Thus living
bodies are not to be identified with living bodies under
personal dominance. There is no necessary connection be¬
tween ‘life’ and ‘personality’. A ‘personal’ society need not
be ‘living’, in the general sense of the term; and a ‘living’
society need not be ‘personal’.

Section V. The Universe achieves its values by reason of
its co-ordination into societies of societies, and into societies
of societies of societies. Thus an army is a society of regiments,
and regiments are societies of men, and men are societies of
cells, and of blood, and of bones, together with the dominant
society of personal human experience, and cells are societies
of smaller physical entities such as protons, and so on, and so
on. Also all of these societies presuppose the circumambient
space of social physical activity.

It is evident that the previous definition of * society’ has

THE GROUPING OF OCCASIONS 265

been phrased so as to suggest an over-simplified concept of
the meaning. For the nodon of a defining characteristic
must be construed to include the notion of the co-ordination
of societies. Thus there are societies at different levels. For
instance, the army is a society at a level different from that
of a regiment, and similarly for a regiment and a man.
Nature is a complex of enduring objects, functioning as
subordinate elements in a larger spatial-physical society. This
larger society is for us the natural universe. There is how¬
ever no reason to identify it with the boundless totality of
actual things.

Also each of these enduring objects, such as tables, animal
bodies, and stars, is itself a subordinate universe including
subordinate enduring objects. The only strictly personal
society of which we have direct discriminative intuition is
the society of our own personal experiences. We also have
a direct, though vaguer, intuition of our derivation of ex¬
perience from the antecedent functioning of our bodies,
and a still vaguer intuition of our bodily derivation from
external nature.

Nature suggests for our observation gaps, and then as it
were withdraws them upon challenge. For example, ordinary
physical bodies suggest solidity. But solids turn to liquids,
and liquids to gases. And from the gas the solid can again
be recovered. Also the most solid of solids is for certain
purposes a viscous fluid. Again impenetrability is a difficult
notion. Salt dissolves in water, and can be recovered from it.
Gases interfuse in liquids. Molecules arise from a patterned
interfusion of atoms. Food interfuses with the body, and
produces an immediate sense of diffused bodily vigour. This
is especially fhe case with liquid stimulants. Thus the direct
immediate experience of impenetrability loses upon challenge
its sharp-cut status.

266

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

Section VI. Another gap is that between lifeless bodies
and living bodies. Yet the living bodies can be pursued
down to the .edge of lifelessness. Also the functionings of
inorganic matter remain intact amid the functionings of
living matter. It seems that, in bodies that are obviously
living, a co-ordination has been achieved that raises into
prominence some functionings inherent in the ultimate oc¬
casions. For lifeless matter these functionings thwart each
other, and average out so as to produce a negligible total
effect. In the case of living bodies the co-ordination inter¬
venes, and the average effect of these intimate functionings
has to be taken into account.

Those activities in the self-formation of actual occasions
which, if co-ordinated, yield living societies are the inter¬
mediate mental functionings transforming the initial phase
of reception into the final phase of anticipation. In so far as
the mental spontaneities of occasions do not thwart each
other, but are directed to a common objective amid varying
circumstances, there is life. The essence of life is the teleo¬
logical introduction of novelty, with some conformation of
objectives. Thus novelty of circumstance is met with novelty
of functioning adapted to steadiness of purpose.

Life may characterize a set of occasions diffused through¬
out a society, though not necessarily including all, or even
a majority of, the occasions of that society. The common
element of purpose which characterizes these various occa¬
sions must be reckoned as one element of the determining
characteristic of the society. It is evident that according to
this definition no single occasion can be called living. Life
is the co-ordination of the mental spontaneities throughout
the occasions of a society.

But apart from life a high grade of mentality in indi¬
vidual occasions seems to be impossible. A personal society,

THE GROUPING OF OCCASIONS 267

itself living and dominantly influencing a living society
wider than itself, is the only type of organization which
provides occasions of high-grade mentality. Thus in a man,
the living body is permeated by living societies of low-grade
occasions so far as mentality is concerned. But the whole is
co-ordinated so as to support a personal living society of high-
grade occasions. This personal society is the man defined as
a person. It is the soul of which Plato spoke.

How far this soul finds a support for its existence beyond
the body is — another question. The everlasting nature of
God, which in a sense is non-temporal and in another sense
is temporal, may establish with the soul a peculiarly intense
relationship of mutual immanence. Thus in some important
sense the existence of the soul may be freed from its complete
dependence upon the bodily organization.

But it is to be noticed that the personality of an animal
organism may be more or less. It is not a mere question of
having a soul or of not having a soul. The question is, How
much, if any? Any tendency to a high-grade multiple per¬
sonality would be self-destructive by the antagonism of
divergent aims. In other words, such multiple personality is
destructive of the very essence of life, which is conformation
of purpose.

CHAPTER XIV

APPEARANCE AND REALITY

Section I. The objective content of an occasion of ex¬
perience sorts itself out under two contrasted characters —
Appearance and Reality. It is to be noticed that this is not
the only dichotomy exhibited in experience. There are the
physical and the mental poles, and there are the objects pre-
hended and the subjective forms of the prehensions. In fact
this final pair of opposites, Appearance and Reality, is not
quite so fundamental metaphysically as the other two pairs.

In the first place the division between appearance and
reality does not cover the whole of experience. It only con¬
cerns the objective content, and omits the subjective form of
the immediate occasion in question. In the second place, its
importance is negligible except in the functionings of the
higher phases of experience, when the mental functionings
have achieved a peculiar complexity of synthesis with the
physical functionings. But in these higher phases, the contrast
Appearance and Reality dominates those factors of experience
which are discriminated in consciousness with peculiar dis¬
tinctness. Thus the foundation of metaphysics should be
sought in the understanding of the subject-object structure
of experience, and in the respective roles of the physical and
mental functionings.

Unfortunately the superior dominance in consciousness
of the contrast ‘Appearance and Reality’ has led meta-

APPEARANCE AND REALITY 269

physicians from the Greeks onwards to make their start from
the more superficial characteristic. This error has warped
modern philosophy to a greater extent than ancient or
mediaeval philosophy. The warping has taken the form of
a consistent reliance upon sensationalist perception as the
basis of all experiential activity. It has had the effect of de¬
cisively separating ‘ mind 5 from ‘ nature ’, a modern separation
which found its first exemplification in Cartesian dualism.
But it must be remembered that this modern development
was only the consistent carrying out of principles already
present in the older European philosophy. It required two
thousand years for the full implication of those principles to
dawn upon men’s minds in the seventeenth and the eighteenth
centuries after Christ.

Section II. The distinction between ‘appearance and
reality’ is grounded upon the process of self-formation of
each actual occasion. The objective content of the initial
phase of reception is the real antecedent world, as given for
that occasion. This is the ‘reality’ from which that creative
advance starts. It is the basic fact of the new occasion, with
its concordances and discordances awaiting co-ordination in
the new creature. There is nothing there apart from the real
agency of the actual past, exercising its function of objective
immortality. This is reality, at that moment, for that occasion.
Here the term ‘reality’ is used in the sense of the opposite
to ‘appearance’.

The intermediate phase of self-formation is a ferment of
qualitative valuation. These qualitative feelings are either
derived directly from qualities illustrated in the primary
phase, or are indirectly derived by their relevance to them.
These conceptual feelings pass into novel relations to each
other, felt with a novel emphasis of subjective form. The
ferment of valuation is integrated with the physical prehen-

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

270

sions of the physical pole. Thus the initial objective content
is still there. But it is overlaid by, and intermixed with, the
novel hybrid prehensions derived from integration with the
conceptual ferment. In the higher types of actual occasions,
propositional feelings are now dominant. This enlarged
objective content obtains a co-ordination adapting it to the
enjoyments and purposes fulfilling the subjective aim of the
new occasion.

The mental pole has derived its objective content alike by
abstraction from the physical pole and by the immanence
of the basic Eros which endows with agency all ideal possi¬
bilities. The content of the objective universe has passed from
the function of a basis for a new individuality to that of
an instrument for purposes. The individual process is now
feeling its own completion: Cogito, ergo sum. And in
Descartes5 phraseology, ‘cogitatio5 is more than mere intel¬
lectual understanding.

This difference between the objective content of the initial
phase of the physical pole and the objective content of the
final phase, after the integration of physical and mental
poles, constitutes ‘appearance5 for that occasion. In other
words, ‘appearance5 is the effect of the activity of the mental
pole, whereby the qualities and co-ordinations of the given
physical world undergo transformation. It results from the
fusion of the ideal with the actual — The light that never was,
on sea or land.

Section III. There can be no general metaphysic prin¬
ciples which determine how in any occasion appearance
differs from the reality out of which it originates. The
divergencies between reality and appearance depend on the
type of social order dominating the environment of the
occasion in question. All our information on this topic, direct
and inferential, concerns this general epoch of the Universe

APPEARANCE AND REALITY 271

and. more particularly, animal life on the surface of the
Earth.

In respect to the occasions which compose the societies of
inorganic bodies or of the so-called empty spaces, there is
no reason to believe that in any important way the mental
activities depart from functionings which are strictly con¬
formal to those inherent in the objective datum of the first
phase. Thus no novelty is introduced. The perspective
elimination is effected according to the Taws of nature5
inherent in the epoch. This composition of activities consti¬
tutes the laws of physics. There is no effective ‘appearance5.

But the case is very different for the high-grade occasions
which are components in the animal life on the Earth’s
surface. Each animal body is an organ of sensation. It is
a living society which may include in itself a dominant
‘personal5 society of occasions. This ‘personal5 society is
composed of occasions enjoying the individual experiences
of the animals. It is the soul of man. The whole body is
organized, so that a general co-ordination of mentality is
finally poured into the successive occasions of this personal
society. Thus in the constitutions of these occasions, appear¬
ance is sufficiently co-ordinated to be effective. Also con¬
sciousness arises in the subjective forms in these experiences
of the higher animals. It arises peculiarly in connection
with the mental functions, and has to do primarily with
their product. Now appearance is one product of mentality.
Thus in our conscious perceptions appearance is dominant.
It possesses a clear distinctness, which is absent from our
vague massive feeling of derivation from our actual world.
Appearance has shed the note of derivation. It lives in our
consciousness as the world presented to us for our enjoy¬
ment and our purposes. It is the world in the guise of a
subject-matter for an imposed activity. The occasion has

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

272

gathered the creativity of the Universe into its own com¬
pleteness, abstracted from the real objective content which is
the source of its own derivation.

This status of ‘appearance’ in the constitution of ex¬
perience is the reason for the disastrous metaphysical
doctrine of physical matter passively illustrating qualities,
and devoid of self-enjoyment. As soon as clarity and dis¬
tinctness are made the test of metaphysical importance,
an entire misapprehension of the metaphysical status of
appearance is involved.

Section IV. When the higher functionings of mentality
are socially stabilized in an organism, appearance merges
into reality. To take the most conspicuous example, con¬
sider the personal succession of experiences in the life of a
human being. The present occasion in this personal life
inherits with peculiar dominance the antecedent experiences
in this succession. But these antecedent experiences include
the ‘appearances* as in those occasions. These antecedent
appearances are part of the real functioning of the real actual
world as it stands in the primary phase of the immediately
present occasion. It is a real fact of nature that the world
has appeared thus from the standpoint of these antecedent
occasions of the personal life. And more generally dropping
the special case of personality, the objective reality of the past,
as it now functions in the present, in its day was appearance.
They may be strengthened in emphasis, embroidered upon,
and otherwise modified by the novel appearances of the
new occasion. In this way, there is an intimate, inextricable
fusion of appearance with reality, and of accomplished fact
with anticipation. In truth, we have been describing the exact
situation which human experience presents for philosophic
analysis.

We are apt to think of this fusion from the point of view

APPEARANCE AND REALITY 273

of the higher grades of human beings. But it is a fusion
proceeding throughout nature. It is the essential mode in
which novelty enters into the functionings of the world.

Section V. It is a mistake to suppose that, at the level of
human intellect, the role of mental functionings is to add
subtlety to the content of experience. The exact opposite
is the case. Mentality is an agent of simplification; and
for this reason appearance is an incredibly simplified edition
of reality. There should be no paradox in this statement.
A moment’s introspection assures one of the feebleness
of human intellectual operations, and of the dim massive
complexity of our feelings of derivation. The point for dis¬
cussion is how in animal experience this simplification is
effected.

The best example of this process of simplification is afforded
by the perception of a social nexus as a unity, charac¬
terized by qualities derived from its individual members
and their interconnections. With some elimination, the
defining characteristic of the nexus is directly perceived to
be qualifying that nexus as a unity. It often happens that
in this perception of the nexus as thus qualified there is a
wavering between the ascription of the quality to the group
as one, and to its individual components as many. Thus,
the orchestra is loud as one entity, and also in virtue of the
perceived loudness of the individual members with their
musical instruments. The transference of the characteristic
from the individuals to the group as one can be explained by
the mental operations. There is the conceptual entertain¬
ment of the qualities illustrated by the individual actualities.
The qualities shared by many individuals are fused into
one dominating impression. This dominating prehension
is integrated with the nexus, or with some portion of it,
perceived as a unity illustrating that quality. The association

18

wi

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

274

of a nexus as one with a quality will, for the experient
subject, be in general a mode of exemplification which differs
from the mode in which the respective individuals illustrate
it. The discipline of a regiment inheres in the regiment in a
different mode from its inherence in the individual soldiers.
This difference of mode of illustration may be more or less
evident. But it is there. It gives another reason for the
aspect of the passive inherence of quality in substance.
The composite group illustrates its qualities passively. The
activity belongs to the individual actualities. This whole
question of the transference of quality from the many indi¬
viduals to the nexus as one is discussed at length in Process and
Reality , Part 111, Chapter 111, Section IV, where it is termed
‘Transmutation5. Obviously the transmuted percept belongs
to Appearance. But as it occurs in animal experience, it
belongs to appearance merged with reality. For it is inherited
from the past. It is thus a fact of nature that the world so
appears. It is a structural relationship of animate nature on
the Earth’s surface. In all Appearance there is an element
of Transmutation.

Section VI. For animal life on Earth by far the most
important example of Transmutation is afforded by Sense-
Perception. No doctrine of sense-perception can neglect the
teaching of physiology. The decisive factor in sense-percep¬
tion is the functioning of the brain, and the functioning
of the brain is conditioned by the antecedent functionings
of the other parts of the animal body. Given requisite
bodily functionings, the sense-perception results. The ac¬
tivities of nature external to the animal body are irrelevant
as to their details, so long as they have the general character
of supporting the existence of the total animal organism.
The human body is the self-sufficient organ of human sense-
perception.

APPEARANCE AND REALITY 275

There are external events, such as the transmission of
light or the movements of material bodies which respec¬
tively are the normal modes of exciting sense-percepts of
particular types. But in the first place these external events
are only the normal modes. A diet of drugs will do equally
well, though its issue in perception is not so definitely
to be predicted. Thus no one type of external event is
necessarily associated with one type of sense-percept. Hardly
any percept is strictly normal. Gross illusions are plentiful,
and some element of illusion almost universal. An ordinary
looking-glass produces illusive percepts in almost every
room.

Secondly, confining ourselves to the normal modes of
excitation, the only important factor in the external event
is how it affects the functionings of the surface of the body.
How the light enters the eye, and a normal healthy state
of the body, are the only important factors in normal visual
sensation. The light may have come from a nebula distant
by a thousand light-years, or it may have its origin in an
electric lamp two feet off and have suffered a complex
arrangement of reflections and refractions. Nothing matters
except how it enters the eye, as to its composition, its in¬
tensity, and its geometric ordering. The body is supremely
indifferent as to the past history of its exciting agents, and
requires no certificate of character. The peculiar bodily
excitement is all that matters.

The conclusion is that the direct information to be derived
from sense-perception wholly concerns the functionings of
the animal body. The sense of unity with the body does
in fact dominate our sense-experiences. But the bodily
organization is such as finally to promote a wholesale
transmutation of sensa, inherited from antecedent bodily
functionings, into characteristics of regions with well-marked

18-2

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

276

geometrical relations to the geometrical structures of these
functionings. In this transmutation the experient occasion
in question belongs to the personal succession of occasions
which is the soul of the animal. The bodily functionings
and the nexus relevant to them by geometrical relationship
are immanent in the experient occasion. The qualitative in¬
heritance from the individual occasions implicated in these
functionings is transmuted into the characteristics of regions
conspicuously indicated by their geometrical connections.
This doctrine is plainly indicated in the analysis of optical
vision, where the image occupies the region indicated by
geometrical relations within the eyes. It is more obscurely
evident in the case of other species of sensa.

It is to be remembered also that along the personal succes¬
sion of the soul’s experiences, there is an inheritance of sense-
perception from the antecedent members of the personal
succession. Also incipient sense-percepta may be forming
themselves in the nerve-routes, or in the neighbouring regions
of the brain. But the final synthesis, with its production of
appearance, is reserved for the occasions belonging to the
personal soul.

Section VII. The question of the proper description of
the species of qualities termed ‘sensa5 is important. Un¬
fortunately the learned tradition of philosophy has missed
their main characteristic, which is their enormous emotional
significance. The vicious notion has been introduced of mere
receptive entertainment, which for no obvious reason by re¬
flection acquires an affective tone. The very opposite is the
true explanation. The true doctrine of sense-perception is
that the qualitative characters of affective tones inherent in
the bodily functionings are transmuted into the characters
of regions. These regions are then perceived as associated
with those character-qualities, but also these same qualities

APPEARANCE AND REALITY 2JJ

are shared by the subjective forms of the prehensions. This
is the reason of the definite aesthetic attitude imposed by
sense-perception. The pattern of sensa characterizing the
object — that is, those sensa in that pattern of contrast — enters
also into the subjective form of the prehension. Thus art is
possible. For not only can the objects be prescribed, but also
the corresponding affective tones of their prehensions. This
is the aesthetic experience so far as it is based upon sense-
perception.

Section VIII. Another point to be noticed is that in
sense-perception a region in the contemporary world is the
substratum supporting the sensa. It is the region straight¬
away in such-and-such a direction. But this geometrical
relation of being c straight-away in such-and-such a direction 5
is defined by the operations of the brain. It has nothing
to do with any physical transmission from the substrate
region to the brain. To judge from some descriptions of
perception in terms of modern scientific theories, it might
be concluded that we perceive along the track of a ray of
light. There is not the slightest warrant for such a notion.
The track of light in the world external to the animal body
is irrelevant. The coloured region is perceived straight-away
in such-and-such a direction. This is the fundamental notion
of 'straightness’.

It therefore becomes necessary for the self-consistency of
this doctrine to enquire whether the dominant structure of
geometrical relations includes a determination of straight¬
ness. The theory requires that a prehension of a nexus
within the brain as exhibiting straightness in the mutual
relations of its parts should thereby determine the prolonga¬
tion of those relations into regions beyond the brain. In
simpler language, a segment of a straight line as prehended
within the brain should necessarily determine its prolonga-

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

278

tion externally to the body, irrespective of the particular
characters of the external events. The possibility of trans¬
mutation5 involving the ‘Projection5 ofsensa is then secured.

I have discussed this question elsewhere,1 and have given
a definition of straight lines — and, more generally, of flat¬
ness — which satisfies the requirements. The necessity of
basing straightness upon measurement, and measurement
upon particular happenings is thereby avoided. The notions
of straightness and of congruence, and thence of distance,
can be derived from those underlying a uniform systematic
non-metrical geometry.

It may be noticed in passing that, if straightness depends
upon measurement, there can be no perception of straightness
in the unmeasured. The notion of ‘straight in front5 must
then be meaningless.

Section IX. In this way, the inheritance from the past is
precipitated upon the present. It becomes sense-perception,
which is the ‘appearance5 of the present.

The ‘mutual immanence5 of contemporary occasions to
each other is allied to the immanence of the future in the
present, though it presents some features of its own. This
immanence exhibits a symmetrical relation of causal in¬
dependence. In human experience, the prehensions of the
contemporary world exhibit themselves as sense-perceptions,
effected by means of the bodily organs of sensation. The
subjective forms of these sense-perceptions involve con¬
scious discrimination, with varying degrees of clarity and
distinctness. Indeed sense-perceptions can exhibit themselves
as clear and distinct in consciousness to a degree unrivalled
by any other type of prehension. The result is that all at-

1 Cf. Process and Reality, Part iv, Chapters m, iv, and v. The required definition
is given in Chapter m, and the theory of the projection of sensa is discussed in
Chapters iv and v.

APPEARANCE AND REALITY

279

tempts at an exact systematic doctrine of the nature of things
seeks its most obvious verification in the conformity of its
theory with sense-perception. The unfortunate effect has
been, that all direct observation has been identified with
sense-perception. This assumption has been criticized in
Chapter xi.

But sense-perception, as conceived in the isolation of its
ideal purity, never enters into human experience. It is always
accompanied by so-called ‘interpretation’. This ‘interpre¬
tation’ does not seem to be necessarily the product of any
elaborate train of intellectual cogitation. We find ourselves
‘accepting’ 1 a world of substantial objects, directly presented
for our experience. Our habits, our states of mind, our
modes of behaviour, all presuppose this ‘interpretation’. In
fact the concept of mere sensa is the product of high-grade
thinking. It required Plato to frame the myth of the Shadows
in the Cave, and it required Hume to construct the doc¬
trine of pure sensationalist perception. Yet even animals
share in some ‘interpretation’. There is every evidence that
animals enjoy a sensationalist experience. Dogs smell, eagles
see, and noises attract the attention of most of the higher
animals. Also their consequent modes of behaviour suggest
their immediate assumption of a substantial world around
them. In fact the hypothesis of a mere sensationalist per¬
ception does not account for our direct observation of the
contemporary world. There is some other factor present,
which is equally primitive with our perception of sensa. This
factor is provided by the immanence of the past in the im¬
mediate occasion whose percipience is under discussion. The

1 Cf. Perception , by H. H. Price, especially Chapter vi, ‘ Perceptual Assurance,
Perceptual Acceptance’. Published by Methuen, London, 1932. Price in
his valuable work gives to sense-perception a more fundamental role in
experience than my doctrine allows to it. Cf. also Santayana’s doctrine of
‘Animal Faith’.

28o

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

immanence of the past in this percipient occasion cannot be
fully understood apart from due attention to the doctrine of
the immanence of the future in the past. Thus the past as
an objective constituent in the experience of the percipient
occasion carries its own prehension of the future beyond
itself. This prehension survives objectively in the primary
phase of the percipient. Accordingly there is an indirect
prehension of contemporary occasion, via the efficient causa¬
tion, from which they arise. For the immediate future of the
immediate past constitutes the set of contemporary occasions
for the percipient. Also these prehensions of immediate
past and of immediate future operate dominantly in their
experience of their respective subjects. Thus the prehension
of contemporary occasions is the prehension of those occa¬
sions in so far as they are conditioned by the occasions
in the immediate past of the prehending subject. Thus
the present is perceivable in so far as it is conditioned
by the efficient causation from the past of the perceiver.
The great dominant relationships, fundamental for the
epochal order of nature, thereby stand out with over¬
whelming distinctness. These are the general, all-pervasive,
obligations of perspective. Such relationships are what we
term the spatial relationships as perceivable from the stand¬
point of the observer.

But the particular occasions of the contemporary world,
each with its own individual spontaneity, are veiled from
the observer. In this respect, the contemporary world in the
experience of the percipient shares the characteristics of the
future. The relevant environment, which is the immediate
past of the human body, is peculiarly sensitive to its geo¬
metrical experiences and to the synthesis of its qualitative
prehensions with these experiences of geometrical relations.
In this way, there is a basis in fact for the association of

APPEARANCE AND REALITY

28l

derivates from significant regions in the past with the geo¬
metrical representatives of those regions in the present. [Gf.
Process and Reality , Part 111, Chapter m, Section IV, and
Part iv, Chapters iv and v.]

The conclusion is that the contemporary world is not per¬
ceived in virtue of its own proper activity, but in virtue of
activities derived from the past, the past which conditions it
and which also conditions the contemporary percipient. These
activities are primarily in the past of the human body, and
more remotely in the past of the environment within which
the body is functioning. This environment includes those oc¬
casions dominantly conditioning the perceived contemporary
regions. This theory of the perception of contemporaries
allows for our habitual belief that we perceive the contem¬
porary world with a general qualitative relevance to the
essences of the occasions making up its various regions; and
also with a bias of qualitative distortion due to the functioning
of the animal body of the percipient.

One distortion stands out immediately. Each actual occa¬
sion is in truth a process of activity. But the contemporary
regions are mainly perceived in terms of their passive per¬
spective relationship to the percipient and to each other.
They are thus perceived merely as passive recipients of the
qualities with which in sense-perception they are associated.
Hence the false notion of a substratum with vacuously in¬
herent qualities. Here the term ‘vacuous’ means ‘devoid of
any individual enjoyment arising from the mere fact of
realization in that context5. In other words, the substratum
with its complex of inherent qualities is wrongly conceived
as bare realization, devoid of self-enjoyment, that is to say,
devoid of intrinsic worth. In this way, the exclusive reliance
on sense-perception promotes a false metaphysics. This error
is the result of high-grade intellectuality. The instinctive

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

282

. i

interpretations which govern human life and animal life
presuppose a contemporary world throbbing with energetic
values. It requires considerable ability to make the disastrous
abstraction of our bare sense-perceptions from the massive
insistency of our total experiences. Of course, whatever we
can do in the way of abstraction is for some purposes useful
— provided that we know what we are about.

CHAPTER XV

PHILOSOPHIC METHOD

Section I. In this final chapter of Part hi my aim is a
discussion of some methods which can usefully be employed
in the pursuit of speculative philosophy. In illustration, and
as a subsidiary aim, I shall refer to some doctrines of my
own,1 and to some comments upon them. In this chapter the
transient aspect of nature will be mainly emphasized.

So far as concerns methodology, the general issue of the
discussion will be that theory dictates method, and that
any particular method is only applicable to theories of one
correlate species. An analogous conclusion holds for the
technical terms. This close relation of theory to method
partly arises from the fact that the relevance of evidence
depends on the theory which is dominating the discussion.
This fact is the reason why dominant theories are also
termed ‘working hypotheses’.

An example is afforded when we interrogate experience
for direct evidence of the interconnectedness of things. If
we hold with Hume, that the sole data originating reflective
experience are impressions of sensation, and also if we also
admit with him the obvious fact that no one such impression
by its own individual nature discloses any information as
to another such impression, then on that hypothesis the
direct evidence for interconnectedness vanishes. Again, if

1 Cf. Process and Reality , subsequently cited under the abbreviation P.R.
Also, Science and The Modern World, cited as S.M. W.

284 ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

we hold the Cartesian doctrine of substantial souls with
many adventures of experience, and of substantial material
bodies, then on that hypothesis the relations between two
occasions of experience qualifying one soul are no evidence
as to the connectedness of two such occasions respectively
qualifying two different souls, and are no evidence as to the
connectedness of a soul and a material body, and are no
evidence as to the connectedness of two occasions of agitation
of one material body, or of two such occasions respectively
belonging to different material bodies. But if we hold, as
for example in Process and Reality , that all final individual
actualities have the metaphysical character of occasions of
experience, then on that hypothesis the direct evidence as
to the connectedness of one’s immediate present occasion of
experience with one’s immediately past occasions, can be
validly used to suggest categories applying to the connected¬
ness of all occasions in nature. A great deal of confused
philosophical thought has its origin in obliviousness to the
fact that the relevance of evidence is dictated by theory.
For you cannot prove a theory by evidence which that
theory dismisses as irrelevant. This is also the reason that in
any science which has failed to produce any theory with a
sufficient scope of application, progress is necessarily very
slow. It is impossible to know what to look for, and how to
connect the sporadic observations. Philosophical discussion
in the absence of a theory has no criterion of the validity of
evidence. For example, Hume assumes that his doctrine of
association holds for all types of impressions of sensation
and of ideas of them indiscriminately. This assumption is
part of his theory. In divorce from the theory, a separate
appeal to experience is required for each type of impression,
for example, tastes, sounds, sights, etc., and likewise, not
only for the association of tastes inter se and of sounds inter

PHILOSOPHIC METHOD

285

se , but for the association of tastes with sounds, and so on
for every possible type, and for every possible conjunction
of types.

To sum up this preface, every method is a happy simplifica¬
tion. But only truths of a congenial type can be investigated
by any one method, or stated in the terms dictated by the
method. For every simplification is an over-simplification.
Thus the criticism of a theory does not start from the question,
True or false? It consists in noting its scope of useful appli¬
cation and its failure beyond that scope. It is an unguarded
statement of a partial truth. Some of its terms embody a
general notion with a mistaken specialization, and others of
its terms are too general and require discrimination of their
possibilities of specialization.

Section II. Philosophy is a difficult subject, from the days
of Plato to the present time haunted by subtle perplexities.
The existence of such perplexities arising from the common
obviousness of speech is the reason why the topic exists.
Thus the very purpose of philosophy is to delve below the
apparent clarity of common speech. In this connection, it
is only necessary to refer to Socrates. Another illustration is
to be found in the Sophist , where Plato states that c not-being 5
is a form of ‘being’. This statement is at once an extreme
instance of the breakdown of language, and the enunciation
of a profound metaphysical truth which lies at the foundation
of this discussion.

Section III. Speculative Philosophy can be defined1 as
the endeavour to frame a coherent, logical, necessary system
of general ideas in terms of which every element of our ex¬
perience can be interpreted. Here ‘interpretation’ means that
each element shall have the character of a particular instance
of the general scheme.

1 Cf. P.R. Part 1, Chapter 1 Section I.

236

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

Thus speculative philosophy embodies the method of the
‘working hypothesis’. The purpose of this working hypo¬
thesis for philosophy is to co-ordinate the current expressions
of human experience, in common speech, in social institutions,
in actions, in the principles of the various special sciences,
elucidating harmony and exposing discrepancies. No syste¬
matic thought has made progress apart from some adequately
general working hypothesis, adapted to its special topic. Such
an hypothesis directs observation, and decides upon the
mutual relevance of various types of evidence. In short, it
prescribes method. To venture upon productive thought
without such an explicit theory is to abandon oneself to the
doctrines derived from one’s grandfather.

In the preliminary stages of knowledge a haphazard criterion
is all that is possible. Progress is then very slow, and most of
the effort is wasted. Even an inadequate working hypothesis
with some conformation to fact is better than nothing. It
co-ordinates procedure.

The advance of any reasonably developed science is two¬
fold. There is the advance of detailed knowledge within the
method prescribed by the reigning working hypothesis; and
there is the rectification of the working hypothesis dictated
by the inadequacies of the current orthodoxy.

Sometimes it is necessary for a science to entertain con¬
currently two — or more — working hypotheses, each with its
own success and its own failure. Such hypotheses are con¬
tradictory as stated; and science awaits their conciliation by
the production of a working hypothesis with a wider sweep.
When a new working hypothesis is proposed, it must be
criticized from its own point of view. For example, it is
futile to object to the Newtonian dynamics that, on the
Aristotelian system, the loose things on the earth’s surface
must be left behind by the earth’s motion.

PHILOSOPHIC METHOD 287

Philosophy has been afflicted by the dogmatic fallacy, which
is the belief that the principles of its working hypotheses are
clear, obvious, and irreformable. Then, as a reaction from
this fallacy, it has swayed to the other extreme which is
the fallacy of discarding method. Philosophers boast that
they uphold no system. They are then a prey to the delusive
clarities of detached expressions which it is the very purpose
of their science to surmount. Another type of reaction is
to assume, often tacitly, that if there can be any intellectual
analysis it must proceed according to some one discarded
dogmatic method, and thence to deduce that intellect is
intrinsically tied to erroneous fictions. This type is illustrated
by the anti-intellectualism of Nietzsche and Bergson, and
tinges American Pragmatism.

Section IV. A method is a way of dealing with data,
with evidence. What are the evidences to which philosophy
appeals?

It is customary to contrast the objective approach of the
ancient Greeks with the subjective approach of the moderns,
initiated by Descartes, and further emphasized by Locke and
Hume.

But, whether we be ancient or modern, we can only deal
with things, in some sense, experienced. The Greeks dealt
with things that they thought they experienced, and Hume
merely asked, What do we experience? This is exactly the
question which Plato and Aristotle thought that they were
answering.

To speak of anything, is to speak of something which, by
reason of that very speech, is in some way a component in
that act of experience. In some sense or other, it is thereby
known to exist. This is what Plato pointed out when he
wrote, Not-being is itself a sort of being.

Speech consists of noises, or visible shapes, which elicit

288

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

an experience of things other than themselves. In so far as
vocables fail to elicit a stable co-ordination of sound-character,
or shape-character, to meaning, those vocables fail to function
as speech. And in so far as some meaning is not in some sense
directly experienced, there is no meaning conveyed. To point
at nothing is not to point.

To speak of the same thing twice is to demonstrate that
the being of that thing is independent of either singular
act of speech, unless we believe that the two acts presuppose
each other or are both presupposed by the thing spoken of.
If we cannot speak of the same thing twice, knowledge
vanishes taking philosophy with it. Thus, since speech can
be repeated, things spoken of have a determined being in
abstraction from the occasion of experience which includes
that act of speech.

The difference between ancients and moderns is that the
ancients asked what have we experienced, and the moderns
asked what can we experience. But in both cases, they asked
about things transcending the act of experience which is the
occasion of asking.

Section V. The translation of Hume’s question from
‘What do we experience’ to ‘What can we experience’ makes
all the difference, though in his ‘Treatise’ Hume makes the
transition, time and again, without explicit comment. For
modern epistemology the latter form of the question — with
its substitution of can for do — is accompanied by the implicit
presupposition of a method, namely that of placing ourselves
in an introspective attitude of attention so as to determine
the given components of experience in abstraction from our
private way of subjective reaction, by reflection, conjecture,
emotion, and purpose.

In this attitude of strained attention, there can be no
doubt as to the answer. The data are the patterns of sensa
provided by the sense organs. This is the sensationalist doc-

PHILOSOPHIC METHOD

289

trine of Locke and Hume. Later, Kant has interpreted the
patterns as forms introduced by the mode of reception pro¬
vided by the recipient. Here Kant introduces the Leibnizian
notion of the self-development of the experiencing subject.
Thus for Kant the data are somewhat narrower than for
Hume: they are the sensa devoid of their patterns. Hume’s
general analysis of the consequences of this doctrine stands
unshaken. So also does his final reflection, that the philo¬
sophic doctrine fails to justify the practice of daily life. The
justification of this procedure of modern epistemology is
twofold, and both of its branches are based upon mistakes.
The mistakes go back to the Greek philosophers. What is
modern, is the exclusive reliance upon them.

Section VI. The first error is the assumption of a few
definite avenues of communication with the external world,
the five sense-organs. This leads to the pre-supposition that
the search for the data is to be narrowed to the question, What
data are directly provided by the activity of the sense-organs
— preferably the eyes. This doctrine of sense-organs has a
vague, general truth, very important for practical affairs. In
particular all exact scientific observation is derived from
such data. The scientific categories of thought are obtained
elsewhere.

But the living organ of experience is the living body as a
whole. Every instability of any part of it — be it chemical,
physical, or molar — imposes an activity of readjustment
throughout the whole organism. In the course of such
physical activities human experience has its origin. The
plausible interpretation of such experience is that it is one
of the natural activities involved in the functioning of such
a high-grade organism. The actualities of nature must be
so interpreted as to be explanatory of this fact. This is one
desideratum to be aimed at in a philosophic scheme.

Such experience seems to be more particularly related to

19

wi

290

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

the activities of the brain. But how far an exact doctrine can
be based upon this presumption lies beyond our powers of
observation. We cannot determine with what molecules the
brain begins and the rest of the body ends. Further, we
cannot tell with what molecules the body ends and the
external world begins. The truth is that the brain is con¬
tinuous with the body, and the body is continuous with the
rest of the natural world. Human experience is an act of
self-origination including the whole of nature, limited to
the perspective of a focal region,1 located within the body,
but not necessarily persisting in any fixed co-ordination with
a definite part of the brain.

Section VII. The second error is the presupposition that
the sole way of examining experience is by acts of conscious
introspective analysis. Such a doctrine of the exclusive
primacy of introspection is already discredited in psychology.
Each occasion of experience has its own individual pattern.
Each occasion lifts some components into primacy and re¬
treats others into a background enriching the total enjoyment.
The attitude of introspection shares this characteristic with
all other experiential occasions. It lifts the clear-cut data
of sensation into primacy, and cloaks the vague compulsions
and derivations which form the main stuff of experience. In
particular it rules out that intimate sense of derivation from
the body, which is the reason for our instinctive identification
of our bodies with ourselves.

In order to discover some of the major categories under
which we can classify the infinitely various components of
experience, we must appeal to evidence relating to every
variety of occasion. Nothing can be omitted, experience
drunk and experience sober, experience sleeping and experi¬
ence waking, experience drowsy and experience wide-awake,

1 Cf. P.R. Pt. n, Ch. in, especially Sects. IV-XI, and Pt. iv, Chs. iv and v.

PHILOSOPHIC METHOD

291

experience self-conscious and experience self-forgetful, ex¬
perience intellectual and experience physical, experience
religious and experience sceptical, experience anxious and
experience care-free, experience anticipatory and experience
retrospective, experience happy and experience grieving, ex¬
perience dominated by emotion and experience under self-
restraint, experience in the light and experience in the dark,
experience normal and experience abnormal.

Section VIII. We have now reached the heart of our
topic. What is the store-house of that crude evidence on
which philosophy should base its discussion, and in what
terms should its discussion be expressed?

The main sources of evidence respecting this width of
human experience are language, social institutions, and
action, including thereby the fusion of the three which is
language interpreting action and social institutions.

Language delivers its evidence in three chapters, one on
the meanings of words, another on the meanings enshrined
in grammatical forms, and the third on meanings beyond
individual words and beyond grammatical forms, meanings
miraculously revealed in great literature.

Language is incomplete and fragmentary, and merely reg¬
isters a stage in the average advance beyond ape-mentality.
But all men enjoy flashes of insight beyond meanings already
stabilized in etymology and grammar. Hence the role of
literature, the role of the special sciences, and the role of
philosophy — in their various ways engaged in finding linguistic
expressions for meanings as yet unexpressed.

As a special example, consider the line and a half of poetry
in which Euripides1 compresses the main philosophical pro¬
blems which have tortured European thought from his day
to the present — “Zeus, whether thou art Compulsion of

1 Trojan Women, 886-7.

19-2

292 ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

Nature or Intelligence of Mankind, to thee I prayed”. Con¬
sider the ideas involved, ‘Zeus’, ‘necessity [compulsion] of
nature’, ‘intelligence of mankind’, ‘prayer’. These lines have
survived the ages with a modern appeal vivid as when first
they thrilled an Athenian audience. The biographer1 of a
modern statesman cites them to express the solemnity of the
spectacle of life passing into religious emotion.

Yet Hume would be able to find no ‘impression of sen¬
sation’ from which to derive ‘Zeus’, or ‘compulsion’, or
‘intelligence’, or the would-be ‘persuasiveness’ which we
term ‘prayer’. John Morley himself selected the quotation
in spite of his own positivistic bias which should trivialize
these meanings. Also, perhaps even for their original author,
the lines represent a triumph of dramatic intuition over tem¬
peramental scepticism.

The common practice, interpreted by the common lan¬
guage of mankind, tells the same tale. A statesman, or a
president of a business corporation, assumes the ‘compul¬
sion of recent events’ [ dvayKTj cfrvareajs] as laying down
inexorable conditions for the future. He frames a ‘policy’
upon this assumption and advises that it be ‘acted on’,
thereby also assuming that the imposed conditions leave
room for the effectiveness of ‘choice’ and ‘intelligence’
[vou?] . He assumes alternatives in contrast to the immediate
fact. He conceives an ideal, to be attained or to be missed.
He conceives such ideals as effective in proportion as they
are entertained. He praises and he blames by reason of
this belief.

In the world, there are elements of order and disorder,
which thereby presuppose an essential interconnectedness of
things. For disorder shares with order the common charac¬
teristic that they imply many things interconnected.

1 Cf. John Morley ’s Life of Gladstone, Ch. x.

PHILOSOPHIC METHOD

293

Each experient enjoys a perspective apprehension of the
world, and equally is an element in the world by reason of
this very prehension, which anchors him to a world tran¬
scending his own experience. For, it belongs to the nature
of this perspective derivation, that the world thus disclosed
proclaims its own transcendence of that disclosure. To every
shield, there is another side, hidden.

Thus an appeal to literature, to common language, to
common practice, at once carries us away from the narrow
basis for epistemology provided by the sense-data disclosed
in direct introspection. The world within experience is
identical with the world beyond experience, the occasion of
experience is within the world and the world is within the
occasion. The categories have to elucidate this paradox of the
connectedness of things — the many things, the one world
without and within.

Section IX. European philosophy is founded upon Plato’s
dialogues, which in their methods are mainly an endeavour
to elicit philosophic categories from a dialectic discussion of
the meanings of language taken in combination with shrewd
observation of the actions of man and of the forces of nature.

But in one dialogue, the Sophist , Plato explicitly considers
the methods of philosophy. One of his conclusions is to
point out the limitations of common speech. Mere dialectic,
uncriticized, is a fallacious instrument, the mark of the
Sophist. For example, Plato insists that not-being is itself a
form of being. Thus in philosophy linguistic discussion is a
tool, but should never be a master. Language is imperfect
both in its words and in its forms. Thus we discover two
main errors to which philosophic method is liable; one is the
uncritical trust in the adequacy of language, and the other
is the uncritical trust in the strained attitude of introspection
as the basis for epistemology.

294

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

But since the life-time of Plato nearly two and a half
thousand years have intervened, including the continuous
activity of European philosophic thought, pagan, Christian,
secular. It is widely held that a stable, well-known philo¬
sophic vocabulary has been elaborated, and that in philo¬
sophic discussion any straying beyond its limits introduces
neologisms, unnecessary and therefore to be regretted.

This alleged fact requires examination. In the first place,
if the allegation be true, it is very remarkable. It decisively
places philosophy apart from the more special sciences.
Modern mathematics, most secure and authoritative of sci¬
ences, is largely written in verbal and symbolic phrases
which would have been unintelligible eighty years ago. In
modern physics the old words, where they are still used,
convey different meanings, and the new words are abundant.
But it is futile to make a catalogue of the sciences accom¬
panied by this refrain. The conclusion is obvious to the most
cursory inspection.

Section X. Undoubtedly, philosophy is dominated by its
past literature to a greater extent than any other science.
And rightly so. But the claim that it has acquired a set of
technical terms sufficient for its purposes, and exhaustive of
its meanings, is entirely unfounded. Indeed its literature is
so vast, and the variations of its schools of thought so large,
that there is abundant evidence of most excusable ignorance
respecting verbal usages.

A recent instance illustrates the vagueness of philosophical
terminology. Logic is, by far, that branch of philosophy best
systematized with the aid of a stable technical language.
Consider the terms Judgment and Proposition. I am not
writing a preface to Logic, so I will confine myself to the
assertion that there is considerable variation in the usages of
these terms among logicians.

PHILOSOPHIC METHOD

295

Also we may well ask whether there are not subtle variations
of meaning stretching far beyond the competence of the
two-term vocabulary — Judgment, Proposition. For example,
Mr Joseph1 has been examining Mr W. E. Johnson’s use
of the term Proposition in his well-known Logical Treatise.
Mr Joseph finds twenty distinct meanings. It is to be re¬
membered that we are here referring to two of the most
acute of modern logicians. Whether Mr Joseph has rightly
interpreted Mr Johnson’s phrases is not to the point. If
Mr Joseph has found twenty distinct, though allied, meanings
closely connected with the term Proposition, there are twenty
such meanings, even though for the moment their divergencies
may seem unimportant to Mr Johnson or to Mr Joseph.
Importance depends on purpose and on point of view. So
at any moment twenty new terms may be required by
some advance in the subtlety of logical theory. Again, if
Mr Johnson has employed twenty distinct meanings, it is
because they were relevant to his argument, even though
his argument may require further completion by reason of
their unnoted distinction.

It is safe to affirm that this situation can be repeated over
every technical term in philosophy.

Section XI. Another illustration, in which my use of
the words2 Prehension, Feeling, Satisfaction, is partly con¬
cerned, can be drawn from the terms expressive of the
connectedness of things. For this topic, the reigning philo¬
sophical term is the word Relation. There are various con¬
troversies about relations which need not be explicitly
referred to. But there is one discussion which illustrates our
immediate topic.

It is generally held that relations are universals, so that A

1 Cf. Mind, Vols. 36, 37, New Series.

3 Cf. S.M.W., Ch. iv and passim and P.R. Part 1, Ch. 11 and passim.

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

296

can have the same relation to B as G has to D. For example
‘loving’, ‘believing’, ‘between’, ‘greater than’, are relations.
There can be no objection to this doctrine. For it is a mere
definition. Universals which require two or more particulars
for their illustration need some term to indicate them, and
Relation is the word chosen.

But with this meaning to the term, a relation cannot signify
the actual connectedness of the actual individual things which
constitute the actual course of history. For example, New
York lies between Boston and Philadelphia. But the con¬
nectedness of the three towns is a real particular fact on the
earth’s surface involving a particular part of the eastern sea¬
board of the United States. It is not the universal ‘between’.
It is a complex actual fact which, among other things,
exemplifies the abstract universal ‘betweenness’.

This consideration is the basis of Bradley’s objection that
relations do not relate. Three towns and an abstract universal
are not three connected towns. A doctrine of connectedness
is wanted. Bradley1 writes ‘Is there, in the end, such a thing
as a relation which is merely between terms ? Or, on the other
hand, does not a relation imply an underlying unity and an
inclusive whole?’

Bradley’s ‘inclusive whole’ is the connectedness of which
we are in search. Throughout this chapter \loc. cit.\ Bradley
uses the term Feeling to express the primary activity at the
basis of experience. It is experience itself in its origin and
with the minimum of analysis. The analysis of Feeling can
never disclose anything lying beyond the essence of the
occasion of experience. Hence Bradley terms it ‘non¬
relational’. There are of course grave differences between my

1 Cf. Essays on Truth and Reality, Ch. vi, On our Knowledge of Immediate Ex¬
perience, Appendix, p. 193.

The page references are to the Oxford edition of 1914. Also cf. Appendix
to Ch. vi, passim, and Supplementary Note to the same.

PHILOSOPHIC METHOD

297

own doctrine and that of Bradley. This was a reason1 for
expounding my point of view in some independence of
Bradley, with due acknowledgment. Surely the proper
method of choosing technical terms is to adopt terms from
some outstanding exposition of an analogous doctrine. It
throws an interesting light on the belief in a well-understood
technical phraseology reigning in philosophy, that an ac¬
complished philosopher censured in print my use of the
word Feeling as being in a sense never before employed in
philosophy.

I may add that William James also employs the word in
much the same sense in his Psychology. For example in the
first chapter he writes, “Sensation is the feeling of first
things”. And in the second chapter he writes, “In general,
this higher consciousness about things is called Perception,
the mere inarticulate feeling of their presence is Sensation,
so far as we have it at all. To some degree we seem able to
lapse into this inarticulate feeling at moments when our
attention is entirely dispersed”. It is interesting to make a
few citations from Bradley, illustrating my general adherence
to his doctrine of Feeling, as expressed in his Chapter. “In
my general feeling at any moment there is more than the
objects before me, and no perception of objects will exhaust
the sense of a living emotion.”2

In accordance with this doctrine of Bradley’s, I analyse a
feeling [or prehension] into the ‘datum’, which is Bradley’s
‘object before me’, into the ‘subjective form’ which is
Bradley’s ‘living emotion’, and into the ‘subject’ which is
Bradley’s ‘me’. My reason for using the term ‘subjective
form’ is that I stretch its meaning beyond ‘emotion’. For
example consciousness, if it be present, is an element in the
subjective form. This is, of course, a grave divergence from
1 Cf. P.R. passim. 2 Bradley, p. 159.

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

298

Bradley. Subjective form is the character assumed by the
subject by reason of some prehended datum.

But on the whole I conform to Bradley’s conception of the
function of subjective form. For example, “These puzzles are
insoluble unless that which I feel, and which is not an object
before me, is present and active. This felt element is used
and it must be used in the constitution of that object which
satisfies me”.1

From my point of view there is an ambiguity in this
statement, but I adhere to either alternative meaning.

The component of feeling ‘which is not an object before
me’ is the subjective form. If Bradley is stating that the
subjective forms of feelings determine the process of inte¬
gration, I entirely agree. The result, as Bradley states, is the
‘ satisfaction 5 which is the final feeling terminating the unrest
of the creative process.

Bradley, however, may mean by his phrase “that which
I feel, and which is not an object before me” what I term a
“negative prehension”. Such a prehension is active via its
contribution of its subjective form to the creative process,
but it dismisses its ‘object’ from the possibility of entering
into the datum of the final satisfaction. This final complex
datum will be what Bradley calls “that object that satisfies
me”. Again I agree.

The doctrine of the ‘living emotion’ which necessarily
clothes each concrete exhibition of the subject-object situa¬
tion is far older than Bradley. We find its germ in Plato,
who insists that the whole character is conformed to the
adequate knowledge. He implicitly refuses to abstract the
‘living emotion’ from the bare intellectual perception, and
thereby identifies virtue with knowledge. The advance in

1 P. 161.

PHILOSOPHIC METHOD

299

psychology has added to our conscious discrimination, but it
has not altered the fact that inevitably perception is clothed
with emotion.

The historical importance of the doctrine is stated by
George Foot Moore:1 “Civilization develops only where
considerable numbers of men work together for common
ends. Such unity is brought about, not so much by com¬
munity of bare ideas as by community of the feelings by
which ideas are ‘emotionalized’ and become beliefs and
motives”.

The conventionalized abstractions prevalent in epistemo¬
logical theory are very far from the concrete facts of ex¬
perience. The word ‘feeling’ has the merit of preserving this
double significance of subjective form and of the appre¬
hension of an object. It avoids the disjecta membra provided
by abstraction.2

Section XII. Thus an occasion of human experience is
one illustration of the required doctrine of connectedness.

Bradley’s authority can be quoted in support. Fie writes:3
“At every moment my stage of experience, whatever else
it is, is a whole of which I am immediately aware. It is an
experienced non-relational unity of many in one”. Here
Bradley by ‘ non-relational ’ apparently means that experience
is not a relation of an experient to something external to
it, but is itself the ‘inclusive whole’ which is the required
connectedness of ‘many in one’.

In this I thoroughly agree, holding that the connectedness

1 In the Prefatory Note to Emotion as the Basis of Civilization , by J. H. Denison,
New York, 1928 (Scribner’s) : a work of importance.

2 The genetic description of the process of ‘ emotionalization ’ is considered
in my ‘ Symbolism , Its Meaning and Effect ’ and also in P.R. Pt. n, Ch. vm, and
throughout Pt. in.

3 Loc. cit. p. 1 75.

300

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

of things is nothing else than the togetherness of things in
occasions of experience. Of course, such occasions are only
rarely occasions of human experience.

Curiously enough Hume also agrees. For his only to¬
getherness of the stream of impressions of sensation, which
in his doctrine are distinct existences at distinct times, lies
in the 4 gentle force5 of association which must lie wholly
within an occasion of experience. This is also one aspect of
Kant’s doctrine, that the occasions of experience provide the
forms of connectedness.

Of course there are important differences between all these
doctrines. But they agree in their general principle — to look
on occasions of experience as the ground of connectedness.

Section XIII. Also Leibniz can find no other connected¬
ness between reals except that lying wholly within the
individual experiences of the monads, including the Supreme
Monad. He employed the terms ‘perception5 and ‘apper¬
ception5 for the lower and higher ways in which one monad
can take account of another, namely for ways of awareness.
But these terms are too closely allied to the notion of con¬
sciousness which in my doctrine is not a necessary accom¬
paniment. Also they are all entangled in the notion of
representative perception which I reject. But there is the
term1 ‘apprehension5 with the meaning of ‘thorough un¬
derstanding5. Accordingly, on the Leibnizian model, I use
the term ‘prehension5 for the general way in which the
occasion of experience can include, as part of its own essence,
any other entity, whether another occasion of experience
or an entity of another type. This term is devoid of sugges¬
tion either of consciousness or of representative perception.

Feelings are the positive type of prehensions. In positive pre-

♦

1 This term is used by L. T. Hobhouse, Theory of Knowledge, Chapters
i and ii.

PHILOSOPHIC METHOD

3°!

hensions the ‘datum’ is preserved as part of the final complex
object which ‘satisfies’ the process of self-formation and
thereby completes the occasion.

This nomenclature has been made up to conform to the
condition that, as a theory develops, its technical phraseology
should grow out of the usages of the great masters who
laid its foundations. The immediate verbal usages at any
moment prevalent in any school of philosophy are but a
small selection from the total vocabulary of the philosophic
tradition. This is rightly the case having regard to the
variations of doctrine.

The current usage can express the doctrine of the reigning
school of thought and of certain accredited variations from
it. The demand that an alternative doctrine with other roots
in the historic tradition should confine itself to this selection
of terms amounts to the dogmatic claim that certain pre¬
liminary assumptions should never be revised. Only those
schools of thought are to be allowed which can be expressed
in the sacred terms. What can reasonably be asked, is that
each doctrine should ground its vocabulary on its own proper
tradition. If this precaution has been taken, an outcry as to
neologisms is a measure of unconscious dogmatism.

Section XIV. The main method of philosophy in dealing
with its evidence is that of descriptive generalization. Social
institutions exemplify a welter of characteristics. No fact
is merely such-and-such. It exemplifies many characters at
once, all rooted in the specialities of its epoch. Philosophic
generalization seizes on those characters of abiding import¬
ance, dismissing the trivial and the evanescent. There is an
ascent from a particular fact, or from a species, to the genus
exemplified.

It is to be noted that the converse procedure is impossible.
There can be no descent from a mere genus to a particular

302

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

fact, or to a species. For facts and species are the product
of the mingling of genera. No genus in its own essence in¬
dicates the other genera with which it is compatible. For
example, the notion of a backbone does not indicate the
notions of suckling the young or of swimming in water. Thus
no contemplation of the genus vertebrate, taken by itself,
can suggest mammals or fishes, even as abstract possibilities.
Neither the species nor the instance are to be discovered by
the genus alone, since both include forms not 'given' by the
genus. A species is a potential mingling of genera, and an
individual instance involves, among other things, an actual
mingling of many species. A syllogism is a scheme for
demonstration of ways of mingling.

Thus the business of Logic is not the analysis of generalities
but their mingling.1

Philosophy is the ascent to the generalities with the view
of understanding their possibilities of combination. The dis¬
covery of new generalities thus adds to the fruitfulness of
those already known. It lifts into view new possibilities of
combination.

Section XV. Even the dim apprehension of some great
principle is apt to clothe itself with tremendous emotional
force. The welter of particular actions arising out of such
complex feelings with their core of deep intuition are in
primitive times often brutish and nasty. Finally civilized
language provides a whole group of words, each embodying
the general idea under its own specialization. If we desire
to reach the generality common to these various specializa¬
tions, we must gather together the whole group of words
with the hope of discerning their common element. This
is a necessary procedure for the purpose of philosophical
generalization. The premature use of one familiar word

1 Gf. Plato’s Sophist, 253.

PHILOSOPHIC METHOD 303

inevitably limits the required generalization by importing
the familiar special connotation of that word.

For example,1 let the working hypothesis be that the ulti¬
mate realities are the events in their process of origination.
Then each event, viewed in its separate individuality, is a
passage between two ideal termini, namely, its components
in their ideal disjunctive diversity passing into these same
components in their concrete togetherness. There are two
current doctrines as to this process. One is that of the external
Creator, eliciting this final togetherness out of nothing. The
other doctrine is that it is a metaphysical principle belonging
to the nature of things, that there is nothing in the Universe
other than instances of this passage and components of these
instances. Let this latter doctrine be adopted. Then the word
Creativity expresses the notion that each event is a process
issuing in novelty. Also if guarded in the phrases Immanent
Creativity, or Self-Creativity, it avoids the implication of a
transcendent Creator. But the mere word Creativity suggests
Creator, so that the whole doctrine acquires an air of paradox,
or of pantheism. Still it does convey the origination of
novelty. The word Concrescence is a derivative from the
familiar Latin verb, meaning ‘growing together’. It also has
the advantage that the participle ‘ concrete ’ is familiarly used
for the notion of complete physical reality. Thus Concrescence
is useful to convey the notion of many things acquiring com¬
plete complex unity. But it fails to suggest the creative novelty
involved. For example, it omits the notion of the individual
character arising in the concrescence of the aboriginal data.
The event is not suggested as ‘emotionalized’, that is, as with
its ‘subjective form’.

Again the term ‘ together ’ is one of the most misused terms

1 Cf. P.R. passim, where the second of the doctrines stated below is de¬
veloped.

304

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

in philosophy. It is a generic term illustrated by an endless
variety of species. Thus its use as though it conveyed one
definite meaning in diverse illustrations is entirely sophisdcal.
Every meaning of ‘ together 5 is to be found in various stages of
analysis of occasions of experience. No things are ‘together5
except in experience; and no things are , in any sense of ‘are5,
except as components in experience or as immediacies of
process which are occasions in self-creation.

Section XVI. Thus to arrive at the philosophic generaliza¬
tion which is the notion of a final actuality conceived in the
guise of a generalization of an act of experience, an apparent
redundancy of terms is required. The words correct each
other. We require1 ‘together5, ‘creativity5, ‘concrescence5,
‘prehension5, ‘feeling5, ‘subjective form5, ‘data5, ‘actuality5,
‘becoming5, ‘process5.

Section XVII. At this stage of the generalization a new
train of thought arises. Events become and perish. In their
becoming they are immediate and then vanish into the past.
They are gone; they have perished; they are no more and
have passed into not-being. Plato terms2 them things that
are ‘always becoming and never really are5. But before he
wrote this phrase, Plato had made his great metaphysical
generalization, a discovery which forms the basis of the present
discussion, tie wrote in the Sophist , not-being is itself a form
of being. He only applied this doctrine to his eternal forms.
He should have applied the same doctrine to the things that
perish. He would then have illustrated another aspect of the
method of philosophic generalization. When a general idea
has been obtained, it should not be arbitrarily limited to the
topic of its origination.

In framing a philosophic scheme, each metaphysical
notion should be given the widest extension, of which it
1 Cf. P.R. passim, also S.M. W. a Gf. Timaeus.

PHILOSOPHIC METHOD

305

seems capable. It is only in this way that the true adjust¬
ment of ideas can be explored. More important even than
Occam’s doctrine of parsimony — if it be not another aspect
of the same — is this doctrine that the scope of a metaphysical
principle should not be limited otherwise than by the necessity
of its meaning.

Thus we should balance Aristotle’s — or, more rightly,
Plato’s — doctrine of becoming by a doctrine of perishing.
When they perish, occasions pass from the immediacy of
being into the not-being of immediacy. But that does not
mean that they are nothing. They remain ‘stubborn fact’:
Pereunt et imputantur.

The common expressions of mankind fashion the past for
us in three aspects — Causation, Memory, and our active
transformation of our immediate past experience into the
basis of our present modification of it. Thus 4 perishing ’ is the
assumption of a role in a transcendent future. The not-being
of occasions is their ‘objective immortality’. A pure physical
prehension is how an occasion in its immediacy of being
absorbs another occasion which has passed into the objective
immortality of its not-being. It is how the past lives in
the present. It is causation. It is memory. It is perception of
derivation. It is emotional conformation to a given situation,
an emotional continuity of past with present. It is a basic
element from which springs the self-creation of each temporal
occasion. Thus perishing is the initiation of becoming. How
the past perishes is how the future becomes.

wi

20

PART IV

CIVILIZATION

CHAPTER XVI

TRUTH

Section I. Truth and Beauty are the great regulative pro¬
perties in virtue of which Appearance justifies itself to the
immediate decision of the experient subject. The justifica¬
tion determines its status in the immediate occasion. The
subjective form of the prehension can include immediate em¬
phasis or attenuation, and it can include purpose of prolonga¬
tion into the future or purpose of exclusion. Truth and Beauty
are the ultimate grounds for emphasis and for prolongation.
Of course the present can be sacrificed to the future, so that
Truth or Beauty in the future can be the reason for the
immediate attenuation of either.

Section II. Truth is a qualification which applies to
Appearance alone. Reality is just itself, and it is nonsense
to ask whether it be true or false. Truth is the conformation
of Appearance to Reality. This conformation may be more
or less, also direct or indirect. Thus Truth is a generic quality
with a variety of degrees and modes. In the Law Courts,
the wrong species of Truth may amount to perjury. For
example, a portrait may be so faithful as to deceive the eye.
Its very truthfulness then amounts to deception. A reflection
in a mirror is at once a truthful appearance and a deceptive
appearance. The smile of a hypocrite is deceptive, and that
©f a philanthropist may be truthful. But both of them were
truly smiling.

Section III. The notion of Truth can be generalized, so

310

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

as to avoid any explicit reference to Appearance. Two objects
may be such that (i) neither may be a component of the
other, and (2) their composite natures may include a com¬
mon factor, although in the full sense of the term their
‘essences’ are different. The two objects can then be said to
have a truth-relation to each other. The examination of one
of them can disclose some factor belonging to the essence of
the other. In other words, an abstraction can be made and
some elements of the complete pattern can be omitted. The
partial pattern thus obtained will be said to be abstracted
from the original. A truth-relation will be said to connect
the objective contents of two prehensions when one and the
same identical partial pattern can be abstracted from both
of them. They each exhibit this same partial pattern, though
their omitted elements involve the differences which belong
to their diverse individualities. Plato uses the term ‘par¬
ticipation5 [fied is] to express the relation of a composite
fact to some partial pattern which it illustrates. Only he
limits the notion of the partial pattern to some purely ab¬
stract pattern of qualitative elements, to the exclusion of the
notion of concrete particular realities as components in a
composite reality. This limitation is misleading. Thus we will
speak of a pattern as possibly including concrete particulars
among its patterned elements. With this enlargement of
meaning, we can say that two objective contents are united
in a truth-relation when they severally participate in the
same pattern. Either illustrates what in part the other
is. Thus they interpret each other. But if we ask what is
meant by ‘truth5, we can only answer that there is a truth-
relation when two composite facts participate in the same
pattern. Then knowledge about one of the facts involves
knowledge about the other, so far as the truth-relation
extends.

TRUTH

311

The truth-relation as realized in experience always in¬
volves some element of Appearance. For the separate pre¬
hensions of the two composite facts have been integrated so
that the two objects stand in the unity of a contrast with
each other. There is an intuition of a limited identity of
pattern involved in the contrast of the diverse essences. In
virtue of this identity there is a transference of subjective
form from the feeling of one object to that of the other.
What is appropriate to one is appropriate to the other. The
intuitive recognition of That is so5 is the subjective form in¬
cluding in itself justification of its own transference from the
object on one side of the contrast to the object on the other
side.

In this way one object as a real fact obtains a re-adjustment
of the relative values of its factors by reason of its analogies
to another object. In other words, it becomes a real fact
tinged with Appearance. By itself, its factors would not be
felt in those proportions. To know the truth partially is to
distort the Universe. For example, the savage who can only
count up to ten enormously exaggerates the importance of
the small numbers, and so do we whose imaginations fail
when we come to millions. It is an erroneous moral platitude,
that it is necessarily good to know the truth. The minor
truth may beget the major evil. And this major evil may
take the form of the major error. Henri Poincare points
out that instruments of precision, used unseasonably, may
hinder the advance of science. For example, if Newton’s
imagination had been dominated by the errors in Kepler’s
Laws as disclosed by modern observation, the world might
still be waiting for the Law of Gravitation. The Truth must
be seasonable.

Section IV. The two conspicuous examples of the truth-
relation in human experience are afforded by propositions

312

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

and by sense-perception. A proposition is the abstract possi¬
bility of some specified nexus of actualities realizing some
eternal object, which may either be simple, or may be a
complex pattern of simpler objects. The realization may
( i ) concern the complete nexus with its component occasions
in assigned functions, or (2) it may concern the individual
realization of the eternal object by some or all, of the com¬
ponent occasions, or (3) it may concern the joint realization
by some unspecified subordinate nexus. All of these alter¬
natives merely concern the possibility of propositions of the
various types, so important for the purposes of Formal
Logic.

But for the present discussion we need simply consider the
broad fact that a proposition is the abstract possibility of an
assigned nexus illustrating an assigned pattern.

No verbal sentence merely enunciates a proposition. It
always includes some incitement for the production of an
assigned psychological attitude in the prehension of the pro¬
position indicated. In other words, it endeavours to fix the
subjective form which clothes the feeling of the proposition as
a datum. There may be an incitement to believe, or to doubt,
or to enjoy, or to obey. This incitement is conveyed partly
by the grammatical mood and tense of the verb, partly by
the whole suggestion of the sentence, partly by the whole
content of the book, partly by the material circumstances of
the book, including its cover, partly by the names of the
author and of the publisher. In the discussion of the nature
of a proposition, a great deal of confusion has been intro¬
duced by confusing this psychological incitement with the
proposition itself.

A proposition is a notion about actualities, a suggestion,
a theory, a supposition about things. Its entertainment in
experience subserves many purposes. It is an extreme case

TRUTH

313

of Appearance. For actualities which are the logical subjects
are conceived in the guise of illustrating the predicate. The
unconscious entertainment of propositions is a stage in the
transition from the Reality of the initial phase of experience
to the Appearance of the final phase. In the lowest types of
actualities in whose processes propositions hardly arise, there
is practically no Appearance differentiating the final and
initial phases.

It is more important that a proposition be interesting than
that it be true. This statement is almost a tautology. For
the energy of operation of a proposition in an occasion of
experience is its interest, and is its importance. But of course
a true proposition is more apt to be interesting than a false
one. Also action in accordance with the emotional lure of
a proposition is more apt to be successful if the proposition
be true. And apart from action, the contemplation of truth
has an interest of its own. But, after all this explanation and
qualification, it remains true that the importance of a pro¬
position lies in its interest. Nothing illustrates better the
danger of specialist sciences than the confusion due to handing
over propositions for theoretical consideration by logicians,
exclusively. The truth of a proposition lies in its truth-relation
to the nexus which is its logical subject. A proposition is true
when the nexus does in reality exemplify the pattern which
is the predicate of the proposition. Thus in the analysis of
the various component factors involved the proposition, if
true, seems to be identical with the nexus. For there are the
same actual occasions and the same eternal objects involved.
But in all analysis there is one supreme factor which is apt
to be omitted, namely, the mode of togetherness. The nexus
includes the eternal object in the mode of realization.
Whereas in the true proposition the togetherness of the nexus
and the eternal object belongs to the mode of abstract possi-

314 ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

bility. The eternal object is then united to the nexus as a
mere ‘predicate5. Thus a nexus and a proposition belong to
different categories of being. Their identification is mere
nonsense. It is the nonsense of the same sort as the fashion¬
able identification of physical fact with formulae of pure
mathematics.

Propositions, like everything else except experience in its
own immediacy, only exist as entertained in experience. It
is the peculiar function of the mental pole that the objective
content of its prehensions only exists in the mode of possi¬
bility. But matter of fact essentially involves a mental pole.
Thus in the analysis of an actual occasion, we necessarily
find components belonging to the mode of possibility. The
most conspicuous example of truth and falsehood arises in
the comparison of existences in the mode of possibility with
existences in the mode of actuality.

Section V. For animals on this Earth, sense-perception
is the culmination of Appearance. The sensa derived from
bodily activities in the past are precipitated upon the regions
in the contemporary world. The note of hypothesis, the note
of mere suggested possibility is eliminated. The regions
appear to the percipient as in their own right associated with
the sensa. The Appearance now is, that the sensa qualify the
regions.

The question then arises, Do the sensa in fact qualify the
regions? The answer depends on what is meant by ‘in fact5,
and what is meant by ‘qualification5. It is here that the
notion of truth and falsehood applies to sense-perception.
But in the realm of truth there are many mansions; and we
have to analyse the types of truth and of falsehood which
sense-perception is capable of.

In the first place, the primary status of the £ensa as quali¬
fications of affective tone must be kept in mind. They are

TRUTH

315

primarily inherited as such qualifications and then by c trans¬
mutation 5 are objectively perceived as qualifications of regions.
The immense aesthetic importance of sensa is due to this
status of sensa. For the sensum as a factor in the datum of a
prehension imposes itself as a qualification of the affective
tone which is the subjective form of that prehension. Thus a
pattern of affective tone is conformally produced by a pattern
of sensa as datum. Now when a region appears as red in
sense-perception, the question arises whether red is qualifying
in any dominant manner the affective tones of the actualities
which in fact make up the region.

If so, there is in this sense a truth-relation between the
reality of the region and its appearance for the contemporary
percipient. For example, if the light has undergone reflections
in a mirror, the appearance of the region behind the mirror
affords no ground for conjecture as to the affective tones of
its component actualities.

This notion of the sensa as qualifications of affective tone is
a paradox for philosophy, though it is fairly obvious to common
sense. A red-irritation is prevalent among nerve-racked people
and among bulls. The affective tone of perception of a green
woodland in spring can only be defined by the delicate shades
of the green. It is a strong aesthetic emotion with the quali¬
fication of green in spring-time. The intellect fastens on smell
as a datum: the animal experiences it as a qualification of
his subjective feelings. Our developed consciousness fastens
on the sensum as datum : our basic animal experience enter¬
tains it as a type of subjective feeling. The experience starts
as that smelly feeling, and is developed by mentality into the
feeling of that smell.

We can also observe qualifications of moods hovering on
the verge of becoming sensa, in fact functioning as sensa
for the infant, and being dismissed from that category by

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

3j6

the developed intellect of the grown-up person. For example,
the emotional moods of the mother nursing the infant, moods
of love, or gaiety, or depression, or irritation, are directly
perceived on the mother’s face by the infant, and are responded
to. It certainly is in the highest degree improbable that the
subtle trains of thought by which our epistemologists obtain
their knowledge should have occurred to speechless infants,
or to dogs and horses. Direct perceptions of such moods in
these cases must enter on equal terms with the other sensa.
But in respect to the perception of such moods, the animal
body functions vary differently from its functionings in the
conveyance of sensa. Hence for the educated intellect there
is a distinction of type.

But in any case the infant feels its mother’s cheerfulness as
a datum, and feels it conformally, with that affective tone.
The datum is derived from the past, the immediate past. It is
precipitated upon that present region occupied by the nexus
of occasions which constitute the complex fact of the mother’s
existence, body and soul. For the infant, the Appearance
includes the qualification of cheerfulness. And in this respect
it may have — it often does have — to the contemporary
real mother a truth-relation in the fullest sense of the term
‘truth’.

Section VI. The relation of sense-perception to contem¬
porary occasions can also exemplify another type of truth-
relation between Appearance and Reality.

The sense-perception may result from the normal func¬
tioning of the healthy animal body. The consequent inherit¬
ance from the antecedent occasions of the personal soul may
likewise share in this healthy normality. Also the particular
body and soul in question may share in that conformation
of their reactions to those main external activities of fluent
energy which is normally required for the preservation of

TRUTH

3W

that species of animal. Given these conditions of normality,
the resulting appearance will be that proper to that species
of animal under circumstances of that type. This is a fact
of nature, and the Appearance expresses the issue of a Law
of Nature, belonging to that cosmic epoch and to those more
special conditions within that epoch. This is a truth-relation
between Appearance and Reality of a more indirect character
than the first sort of truth-relation. It is wider, vaguer, and
more diffuse in its reference. We have perceived what well-
conditioned individuals of our own type would perceive under
those circumstances.

Section VII. Within any type of truth-relation a distinction
arises. The Reality functions in the past, the Appearance is
perceived in the present. On a moonless night, the faintly
luminous stretch of the sky which is the Milky Way is an
Appearance of the contemporary world, namely, it is a great
region within the ‘Receptacle5 of that world as it appears.
But the Reality whose functioning issues in that Appearance,
is a flux of light-energy travelling through the utmost
depths of space and, to our imaginations, through illimitable
time.

Beyond that Milky Way as it stands in sight, at a finite
ill-defined distance, a barrier separating us from the con¬
temporary space beyond : — Does that remote activity of the
transference of light-energy still persist as a contemporary
fact? Perhaps the occasions whose interconnections con¬
stitute that distant region have changed the ordering of
their goings-on. Stars flare out in a few days, and in a few
years their light has died. The Appearance of the con¬
temporary regions has its truth-relations to the past, and
its truth-relations to contemporary Reality. These latter
truth-relations can only be estimated by an imaginative leap,
which has as its basis for justification the truth-relations to

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

3j8

the past and our experience of the stability of the types of
order involved.

Perhaps in the mutual immanence of occasions, although
the antecedence and the consequence — the past, the present
and the future — still hold equally for physical and mental
poles, yet the relations of the mental poles to each other are
not subject to the same laws of perspective as are those of the
physical poles. Measurable time and measurable space are
then irrelevant to their mutual connections. Thus in respect
to some types of Appearance there may be an element of
immediacy in its relations to the mental side of the contem¬
porary world. Other types of Appearance, such as the located
sensa in sense-perception, may depend on the time and space
which express the perspective arising in the mutual immanence
of the physical poles.

If such be the case, some types of Appearance will have a
more direct relation than others to contemporary Reality.

Section VIII. There is a third type of truth-relation which
is even vaguer and more indirect than the second type con¬
sidered above. It may be termed the type of 4 symbolic truth 5 .
This species of truth may be included under the second type,
as an extreme instance of it. But on the whole, it is clearer to
consider it as a distinct species.

The relation of Appearance to Reality, when there is
symbolic truth, is that for certain sets of percipients the pre¬
hension of the Appearance leads to the prehension of the
Reality, such that the subjective forms of the two prehensions
are conformal. There is, however, no direct causal relation
between the Appearance and the Reality ; so that in no direct
sense is the Appearance the cause of the Reality, or the
Reality the cause of the Appearance. A set of adventitious
circumstances has brought about this connection between
those Appearances and those Realities as prehended in the

TRUTH

3X9

experiences of those percipients. In their own natures the
Appearances throw no light upon the Realities, nor do the
Realities upon the Appearances, except in the experiences of
a set of peculiarly conditioned percipients. Languages and
their meanings are examples of this third type of truth. There
is an indirect truth-relation of the sounds or of the visual
marks on paper to the propositions conveyed. We are confining
the discussion to the relation of written or spoken sentences to
propositions. There is a right and a wrong use of any particular
language among the group of people who are properly con¬
ditioned. Also, having regard to the aesthetics of literature,
language not only conveys objective meaning, but also involves
a conveyance of subjective form.

Music, ceremonial clothing, ceremonial smells, and cere¬
monial rhythmic visual appearances, also have symbolic
truth, or symbolic falsehood. In these latter instances, the
conveyance of objective meaning is at a minimum, while
the conveyance of suitable subjective form is at its height.
Music provides an example when it interprets some strong
sentiment, patriotic, martial, or religious, by providing the
emotion which the votaries dumbly feel ought to be attached
to the apprehension of national life, or of the clash of na¬
tions, or of the activities of God. Music elicits some con¬
fused feeling into distinct apprehension. It performs this
service, or dis-service, by introducing an emotional cloth¬
ing which changes the dim objective reality into a clear
Appearance matching the subjective form provided for its
prehension.

There is then the vague truth-relation, via community
of subjective form, between the music and the resulting
Appearance. There is also the truth-relation between the
Appearance and the Reality — the Reality of National Life,
or of Strife between nations, or of the Essence of God. This

320

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

complex fusion of truth-relations, with their falsehoods inter¬
mixed, constitutes the indirect interpretative power of Art to
express the truth about the nature of things. Of course a
somewhat gross, almost vulgar, instance has been given, for
the sake of easy explanation. But the delicate inner truth of
Art is mostly of this sort.

Section IX. This discussion suggests an illustrative di¬
gression on the origins of socially diffused habits of behaviour
and of habits of interpretation, among human beings. An
idea arises from the antecedent establishment of modes of
human functioning which are germane to it. In the infancy
of its incarnation in human history, it lurks in the penumbra
of consciousness, undiscriminated and unexpressed. For the
historian in later ages it discloses itself by the dim growth
of the sense of importance attached to those functionings
of the tribe which dimly elicit its discrimination. But soon
an inversion takes place. These modes of functioning are
interpreted by some restless intellects of the tribe. The
behaviour patterns then, in addition to their own intrinsic
value for tribal life, take on the role of an apparatus of
expression. They become linked to an intellectual con¬
struction. The behaviour patterns, with their entwined
emotions, evoke the apprehension of the construction. Con¬
versely, the entertainment of the construction constitutes an
urge towards the modes of behaviour. In this way, the
ceremonies with their output of emotion become the mode
of expression for the ideas; and the ideas become an inter¬
pretation of the ceremonies. This is the account of the primitive
origination of the linkage of an idea to an apparatus of
expression.

The linkage between an idea and its expression has been
described above as being ‘interpretation’. Some analysis of
this concept of ‘interpretation’ has now to be made. Two

TRUTH

321

behaviour-patterns mutually interpret each other, only when
some common factor of experience is realized in the enact¬
ment of either pattern. The common factor constitutes the
reason for the transition from one pattern to the other pat¬
tern. Each pattern interprets the other as expressive of that
common factor. Here a behaviour-pattern is merely another
phrase for a mode of experience. Thus, in this sense, the
entertainment of a myth is one behaviour-pattern, and a
tribal dance, o^ a Court ceremonial, is another behaviour-
pattern.

Section X. But after all, it is the blunt truth that we want.
The final contentment of our aims requires something more
than vulgar substitutes, or subtle evasions, however delicate.
The indirections of truth can never satisfy us. Our purposes
seek their main justification in sheer matter-of-fact. All the
rest is addition, however important, to this foundation. Apart
from blunt truth, our lives sink decadently amid the perfume
of hints and suggestions.

The blunt truth that we require is the conformal corre¬
spondence of clear and distinct Appearance to Reality. In
human experience, clear and distinct Appearance is pri¬
marily sense-perception. The blunt truth required for sense-
perception is the truth of the first type, already partially
discussed in Section V of this Chapter. In that section the
doctrine was developed that the prehension of a sensum,
as an apparent object qualifying a region, involved for that
prehension a subjective form also involving that sensum as
a factor. We enjoy the green foliage of the spring greenly:
we enjoy the sunset with an emotional pattern including
among its elements the colours and the contrasts of the
vision. It is this that makes Art possible: it is this that pro¬
cures the glory of perceived nature. For if the subjective
form of reception be not conformal to the objective sensa,

WI

21

322

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

then the values of the percept would be at the mercy of the
chance make-up of the other components in that experience.
For example, in the intuition of a multiplicity of three or four
objects, the mere number imposes no subjective form. It is
merely a condition regulating some pattern of effective com¬
ponents. In abstraction from those components, mere triplicity
can dictate no subjective form for its prehension. But green
can. And there lies the difference between the sensa and the
abstract mathematical forms.

The steady values derived from sense-perception, which
are there even when disregarded and even when jarring with
other emotions, exist because the sensa themselves enter into
the subjective forms of their physical prehensions.

Section XI. The point to be decided is whether the green
meadow in spring-time, as it appears to us, in any direct
way conforms to the happenings within the region of the
meadow, and more particularly within the regions of the
blades of grass. Have we any grounds for the belief that in
some way things really are in those regions as our senses per¬
ceive those regions? In the first place, such conformation
evidently cannot arise from the necessities of nature. The
delusive perceptions prove that. Double vision, and images
due to reflexion and refraction of light, show that the ap¬
pearance of regions may be quite irrelevant to the happenings
within regions. Appearances are finally controlled by the
functionings of the animal body. These functionings and
the happenings within the contemporary regions are both
derived from a common past, highly relevant to both. It is
thereby pertinent to ask, whether the animal body and the
external regions are not attuned together, so that under
normal circumstances the appearances conform to natures
within the regions.

The attainment of such conformation would belong to

TRUTH

323

the perfection of nature in respect to the higher types of its
animal life. There is no necessity about it. Evidently there
is failure, interference, and only partial adjustment. But we
have to ask whether nature does not contain within itself a
tendency to be in tune, an Eros urging towards perfection.
This question cannot be discussed without passing beyond the
narrow grounds of the truth-relation.

21-2

CHAPTER XVII

BEAUTY

Section I. Beauty is the mutual adaptation of the several
factors in an occasion of experience. Thus in its primary sense
Beauty is a quality which finds its exemplification in actual
occasions: or put conversely, it is a quality in which such
occasions can severally participate. There are gradations in
Beauty and in types of Beauty.

‘Adaptation5 implies an end. Thus Beauty is only defined
when the aim of the ‘adaptation5 has been analysed. This
aim is twofold. It is, in the first place, the absence of mutual
inhibition among the various prehensions, so that the in¬
tensities of subjective form, which naturally and properly — or
in one word, conformally — arise from the objective contents
of the various prehensions, do not inhibit each other. When
this aim is secured, there is the minor form of beauty, the
absence of painful clash, the absence of vulgarity. In the
second place, there is the major form of Beauty. This form
presupposes the first form, and adds to it the condition that
the conjunction in one synthesis of the various prehensions
introduces new contrasts of objective content with objective
content. These contrasts introduce new conformal in¬
tensities of feelings natural to each of them, and by so doing
raise the intensities of conformal feeling in the primitive
component feelings. Thus the parts contribute to the massive
feeling of the whole, and the whole contributes to the in¬
tensity of feeling of the parts. Thus the subjective forms

BEAUTY

325

of these prehensions are severally and jointly interwoven
in patterned contrasts. In other words, the perfection of
Beauty is defined as being the perfection of Harmony; and
the perfection of Harmony is defined in terms of the per¬
fection of Subjective Form in detail and in final synthesis.
Also the perfection of Subjective Form is defined in terms
of ‘Strength’. In the sense here meant, Strength has two
factors, namely, variety of detail with effective contrast, which
is Massiveness, and Intensity Proper which is comparative
magnitude without reference to qualitative variety. But the
maximum of intensity proper is finally dependent upon
massiveness.

Section II. In order to understand this definition of
Beauty, it is necessary to keep in mind three doctrines which
belong to the metaphysical system in terms of which the
World is being interpreted in these chapters. These three
doctrines respectively have regard to the mutual relations
(a) between the objective content of a prehension and the
subjective form of that prehension, and (b) between the
subjective forms of various prehensions in the same occa¬
sion, and (c) between the subjective form of a prehension
and the spontaneity involved in the subjective aim of the
prehending occasion. These doctrines are interconnected;
but each of them introduces a principle which is not made
explicit by the other two. They will now be successively
explained :

(a) It is held that every qualitative factor in the Universe
is primarily a qualification of subjective form, so that the
infinite variety of qualities involves the possibility of an
infinite variety of subjective forms exemplifying those quali¬
ties. This does not mean that the subjective forms exempli¬
fying various qualities are all equally prominent in human
consciousness. Consciousness is a variable uncertain element

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

326

which flickers uncertainly on the surface of experience. But
it is part of the doctrine that the qualitative content of the
object prehended enters into the qualities exemplified in the
subjective form of that prehension. This is the general prin¬
ciple underlying (1) the doctrine of conformal1 feelings,
constituting the primary phase of the occasion, and (2) the
doctrine of the qualitative valuations forming the activities
of the mental pole, and (3) the doctrine of the valuations
involved in the Primordial Nature of God, here also termed
the Eros of the Universe. It follows that the subjective form
of a prehension is partly dictated by the qualitative element
in the objective content of that prehension. There is in fact
initial conformation. It has been repeatedly stated above
that this is what makes Art possible. Also the factor of
compulsive determinism in the Universe depends on this
principle.

This doctrine of conformation only holds for the qualitative
side of the content of the objective datum. It follows that
two exceptions arise to the more general statement that
subjective form conforms to the objective datum. Both ex¬
ceptions arise when abstraction has reached its extreme limit.
The extremity of abstraction from all qualitative elements
reduces pattern to bare mathematical form — for example,
triplicity or the abstract relationship of sets of numbers, such
as the squareness of the number four. Such forms by their
very natures cannot qualify subjective form. For example,
there is not a squareness of emotion. Thus, except in an in¬
direct fashion — such as the qualitative feelings of smoothness
of a sphere, of spikeyness of a square, of amplitude of a
volume — the doctrine of conformation does not apply to
mathematical pattern. Here pure mathematics in its strictest
modern sense is in question.

1 Cf. Part in, above, and Process and Reality , passim , as indexed.

BEAUTY

327

Again the notion of an actual occasion — that is, of indi¬
vidual actuality — can be entertained in abstraction from any
qualitative or mathematical components which in any sense
are realized in its essence, either as objective data, or as
subjective forms, or as relations between prehensions. A par¬
ticular actuality can also be abstracted from the mode of its
initial indication, so chat in a later phase of experience it is
entertained1 as a bare 4 It' . Only the qualitative components
of an actuality in the datum can pass into the subjective form.
The only actuality implicated in the subjective form is the
immediate occasion in process of self-formation. The sub¬
jective form is that immediate subject in that state of subjective
feeling. In the sense in which an actuality can be indicated
as a bare It for objective prehension — in that sense it does not
enter into the subjective form of the prehension.

(b) The second doctrine expresses the unity of the imme¬
diate occasion in process of formation. The subjective forms are
merely contributions to the one fact which is the subjective
feeling of the one occasion. There is a certain distribution
among the various prehensions, by reason of the fact that
each part of the total objective datum dictates its conformal
qualitative reproduction in the subjective form. In so far
as identical qualities occur in diverse objective data, then the
efficiency of that quality in the subjective form must be
dictated by a process of integration, and also by compatibility
with the other qualitative feelings. Thus the distribution
of subjective form among the separate prehensions refers
primarily to the conformal origins of subjective form de¬
rived from the various components of the total objective
datum.

(c) The third doctrine expresses the final autonomy of

1 Cf. The Concept of Nature, Chapter i, and Process and Reality , Part n,
Section III, Chapter ix , and Part in, Chapter iv.

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

328

the process. This process of the synthesis of subjective forms
derived conformally is not settled by the antecedent fact of
the data. For these data in their own separate natures do not
carry any regulative principle for their synthesis. The regu¬
lative principle is derived from the novel unity which is
imposed on them by the novel creature in process of con¬
stitution. Thus the immediate occasion from the spontaneity
of its own essence must supply the missing determination
for the synthesis of subjective form. Thus the future of the
Universe, though conditioned by the immanence of its past,
awaits for its complete determination the spontaneity of the
novel individual occasions as in their season they come into
being.

Section III. A distinction must now be made between
two meanings of the term Beauty. There is the primary
meaning which has been given in Section I of this chapter.
This is Beauty realized in actual occasions which are the
completely real things in the Universe. But in the analysis
of an occasion, some parts of its objective content may be
termed Beautiful by reason of their conformal contribution
to the perfection of the subjective form of the complete
occasion. This secondary sense of the term Beauty is more
accurately to be considered as a definition of the term 4 Beau¬
tiful5. The Beauty realized in an occasion depends both on
the objective content from which that occasion originates
and also on the spontaneity of the occasion. The objective
content is 4 beautiful 5 by reason of the Beauty that would be
realized in that occasion by a fortunate exercise of its spon¬
taneity. In the same way any part of the objective content
is 4 beautiful 5 in a still more indirect sense, capable of slight
variations in meaning. It may be beautiful by reason of the
Beauty that would be realized by a fortunate association
with other data combined with a fortunate exercise of spon-

BEAUTY

329

taneity by the occasion prehending it. But such supreme
fortune is an ideal, not for this world. By the term ‘ beautiful 5
we usually mean the presupposition of the sort of objective
environment which in that general social setting may be
presupposed, and the sort of spontaneity which may be
hoped for from the percipient occasions in question. We
may be thinking of artists, or of cultivated men of the
modern world, or of the ruck of mankind in a given city at
a given time. But in all its senses, ‘beautiful5 means the
inherent capability for the promotion of Beauty when func¬
tioning as a datum in a percipient occasion. When ‘Beauty5
is ascribed to any component in a datum, it is in this se¬
condary sense.

Section IV. In the initial definition of Beauty, the notion
of ‘perfection5 was tacitly introduced. The ‘perfection5 of
subjective form means the absence from it of component
feelings which mutually inhibit each other so that neither
rises to the strength proper to it. But there are two meanings
to ‘inhibition5 which must be carefully distinguished, since
only one of them involves a derogation from perfection.
Complete inhibition is an example of the finiteness of sub¬
jective form. It does not derogate from ‘perfection5. There
is then ‘perfection5 in its kind — that is to say, in its type of
finiteness with such-and-such exclusions. But then the com¬
pletely inhibited component subjective feeling is not properly
a component of that subjective form. It is merely what would
have been a component under other conditions. This sense of
inhibition will be termed ‘anaesthesia5.

The other meaning of inhibition — the meaning which
derogates from perfection — involves the true active presence
of both component feelings. In this case there is a third
feeling of mutual destructiveness, so that one or other — or
both — of the component feelings fails to attain the strength

330

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

properly belonging to the prehension of the datum from which
it arises. This is the feeling of evil in the most general sense,
namely physical pain or mental evil, such as sorrow, horror,
dislike. This type of inhibition will be termed ‘aesthetic
destruction5. Aesthetic destruction is a positive component
in subjective form, and is inconsistent with perfection. The
subjective experience of aesthetic destruction will be termed
a ‘discordant feeling5. Such a feeling is a factor in the sub¬
jective form of the percipient occasion. The more intense the
discordant feeling, the further the retreat from perfection.
A complex datum is ‘objectively discordant5 when among
the type of percipients in question it will normally produce
discordant feelings.

It follows from this discussion that in the definition of
Beauty a distinction has been overlooked. The subjective
feelings which are of the type of an emotional experience of
aesthetic destruction must be excepted — or rather, as we shall
find, belong to a class requiring special treatment. ‘Per¬
fection5, properly so called, requires the exclusion of feelings
of this class. On further consideration we shall find that
always there are imperfect occasions better than occasions
which realize some given type of perfection. There are in fact
higher and lower perfections, and an imperfection aiming
at a higher type stands above lower perfections. The most
material and the most sensuous enjoyments are yet types
of Beauty. Progress is founded upon the experience of
discordant feelings. The social value of liberty lies in its
production of discords. There are perfections beyond per¬
fections. All realization is finite, and there is no perfection
which is the infinitude of all perfections. Perfections of
diverse types are among themselves discordant. Thus the
contribution to Beauty which can be supplied by Discord
— in itself destructive and evil — is the positive feeling of a

BEAUTY

331

quick shift of aim from the tameness of outworn perfection
to some other ideal with its freshness still upon it. Thus the
value of Discord is a tribute to the merits of Imperfection.

Section V. A consideration of ancient Greek civilization
illustrates the value of discordance. The race was awakened
into progress by a great ideal of perfection. This ideal was
an immense advance upon the ideals which the surrounding
civilizations had produced. It was effective and realized in a
civilization which attained its proper beauty in human lives
to an extent not surpassed before or since. Its art, its theoretic
sciences, its modes of life, its literature, its philosophic
schools, its religious rituals, all conspired to express every
aspect of this wonderful ideal. Perfection was attained, and
with the attainment inspiration withered. With repetition
in successive generations, freshness gradually vanished.
Learning and learned taste replaced the ardour of adventure.
Hellenism was replaced by the Hellenistic epoch in which
genius was stifled by repetition. We can imagine the fate of
the Mediterranean civilization if it had been spared the ir¬
ruptions of Barbarians and the rise of two new religions,
Christianity and Mahometanism: For two thousand years
the Greek art-forms lifelessly repeated: The Greek schools
of philosophy, Stoic, Epicurean, Aristotelian, Neo-Platonic,
arguing with barren formulae : Conventional histories :
A stabilized Government with the sanctity of ancient cere¬
mony, supported by habitual pieties: Literature without
depth: Science elaborating details by deductions from un¬
questioned premises : Delicacies of feeling without robustness
of adventure.

This is no fancy picture. Despite all storms, something of
this sort did happen to the Byzantine Empire for a thousand
years; and despite the inroad of a new religion, Buddhism,
and despite Tartar invasions, something of this sort did hap-

332

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

pen to the vast Chinese Empire for a thousand years. The
Chinese and the Greeks both achieved certain perfections of
civilization — each worthy of admiration. But even perfection
will not bear the tedium of indefinite repetition. To sustain
a civilization with the intensity of its first ardour requires
more than learning. Adventure is essential, namely, the search
for new perfections.

Section VI. There is nothing to be astonished at in this
conclusion. Spontaneity, originality of decision, belongs to the
essence of each actual occasion. It is the supreme expression
of individuality : its conformal subjective form is the freedom
of enjoyment derived from the enjoyment of freedom. Fresh¬
ness, zest, and the extra keenness of intensity arise from it. In
a personal succession of occasions the upward path towards
an ideal of perfection, with the end in sight, gives a thrill
keener than any prolonged halt in a stage of attainment with
the major variations completely tried out. Thus the wise
advice is, Not to rest too completely in any continued realiza¬
tion of the same perfection of type. Each occasion in a society
of occasions, and more particularly each occasion in a per¬
sonal society, seeks this zest by finding some contrast between
the Appearance resulting from the operations of the mental
pole and the inherited Realities of the physical pole. When
spontaneity is at its lowest, in practice negligible, the final
trace of its operation is found in alternations backwards and
forwards between alternative modes. This is the reason for
the predominant importance of wave-transmission in physical
nature.

But — considering occasions at their highest, with effective
exercise of mental originality — the preservation of zest, after
the attainment of a stage of perfection, first requires the
exploration of all variations which do not introduce dis-

BEAUTY

333

cordances into the type of perfection attained. The variation
of styles and of decorative detail in mediaeval Gothic archi¬
tecture may serve as an illustration. But such variations are
easily exhausted. Bolder adventure is needed — the adventure
of ideas, and the adventure of practice conforming itself to
ideas. The best service that ideas can render is gradually to
lift into the mental poles the ideal of another type of per¬
fection which becomes a programme for reform. An illustra¬
tion of this is the service of Christianity by its introduction of
new ideals for the social life of mankind. In other words, the
ideal of a new society derived from a new defining charac¬
teristic is introduced.

Section VII. The doctrine has been stated that the ex¬
perience of destruction is in itself evil ; in fact that it constitutes
the meaning of evil. We find now that this enunciation is
much too simple-minded. Qualifications have to be intro¬
duced, though they leave unshaken the fundamental position
that 4 destruction as a dominant fact in the experience 5 is the
correct definition of evil.

The intermingling of Beauty and Evil arises from the con¬
joint operation of three metaphysical principles: (i) That all
actualization is finite; (2) That finitude involves the exclusion
of alternative possibility; (3) That mental functioning intro¬
duces into realization subjective forms conformal to relevant
alternatives excluded from the completeness of physical
realization.

The result is that the concerns of the actual world are
deflected from harmony of feeling by the divergent tonalities
introduced from the mental poles. The new occasion, even
apart from its own spontaneous mentality, is thus con¬
fronted by basic disharmony in the actual world from which
it springs. This is fortunate. For otherwise actuality would

334

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

consist in a cycle of repetition, realizing only a finite group
of possibilities. This was the narrow, stuffy doctrine of some
ancient thinkers.

In an individual experience there are three ways of dealing
with this disharmony of the world as given for initial pre¬
hension. Two of these ways have been discussed under
the general term 'inhibition5. One way is termed 'Anaes¬
thesia5, and is the way of mere negative prehension. The
other way is by positive realization with the positive feeling
of discordance. In this case, the elimination of the sheer
incompatibility is accompanied by a positive feeling of acute
disruption of affective tone. This experience is the pre¬
hension of a qualitative datum which also imposes itself
conformally on the subjective form. The third way depends
on another principle, that a readjustment of the relative
intensities of incompatible feelings can in some cases reduce
them to compatibilities. This possibility arises when the
clash in affective tones is a clash of intensities, and is not a
sheer logical incompatibility of qualities. Thus two systems
of prehensions may each be internally harmonious; but the
two systems in the unity of one experience may be dis¬
cordant, when the two intensities of their subjective forms are
comparable in magnitude. There may be a discordance in
feeling this as much as that , or in feeling that as much as this.
But if one be kept at a lower intensity in the penumbra of
feeling, it may act as a background to the other, providing
a sense of massiveness and variety. This is the habitual
state of human experience, a vast undiscriminated, or dimly
discriminated background, of low intensity, and a clear
foreground. This third way of eliminating discordance may
be termed the method of 'reduction to a background5.
Alternatively, it can equally well be termed the method of
‘raising to a foreground5. For the avoidance of anaesthesia

BEAUTY

335

may come by the percipient occasion so functioning as to
increase the intensity of subjective tone belonging to the
prehension of one of the two systems.

Yet a fourth way now discloses itself, and this way is the
explanation of the second and third ways for all occasions of
experience where mentality has been developed into its higher
activities. The second and the third ways, when they are not
in truth this fourth way, are examples of the low type of
mental functionings termed1 ‘physical purposes’. This fourth
way is by spontaneity of the occasion so directing its mental
functionings as to introduce a third system of prehensions,
relevant to both the inharmonious systems. This novel system
is such as radically to alter the distribution of intensities
throughout the two given systems, and to change the im¬
portance of both in the final intensive experience of the
occasion. This way is in fact the introduction of Appearance,
and its use to preserve the massive qualitative variety of
Reality from simplification by negative prehensions.

Appearance preserves this variety by concentrating on
itself the intensities properly derived from Reality in the
background. It is a procedure of simplification. For example,
in Appearance the one Region supersedes the many indi¬
vidual occasions which compose it. Also qualities widely
spread throughout the occasions in Reality are in Appear¬
ance inherent either in Regions occupied by these occasions,
or in Regions having some definite association with such
Regions. The Reality is in the background as explanatory
of the procedures by which its rich variety has been saved.
Also the variety of affective tone is now transferred to Ap¬
pearance, with that amount of transformation which saves
its compatibility. There is massive feeling transferred to
Appearance, either of Harmony, or of Discords, or of Vul-

1 Cf. Process and Reality, Part in, Chapter v, Sections VII, VIII.

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

336

garity, or of utter Commonplaceness. Appearance raises into
a distinctness of feeling, factors which can be generalized for
salvation from the welter of Fact. In this way it emphasizes
for individual experience widespread qualities of feeling.
Massiveness of subjective form is somewhat at variance with
the intensity of individual feelings. The variety of individual
intensities thwart each other by their diversities of objects.
Appearance combines massiveness with intensity by unifying
the diversities of objects. It simplifies the objects and pre¬
cipitates upon the simplification the qualitative contents of
the given world. It saves intensities and massiveness at the
cost of eliciting vivid experiences of affective tones, good and
bad. It makes possible the height of Beauty and height of
Evil ; because it saves both from a tame elimination or a tame
scaling down.

Section VIII. We can now consider more closely the
grounds of Harmony and the grounds for the positive feeling
of its destruction. It must be remembered that just as
there is a positive integral feeling of Harmony lost, so
there is a positive integral feeling of Harmony attained.
There is not only the fact of details in experience allowing
each other: beyond that there is the positive feeling of the
whole as Harmonious. Analogously there is the positive
feeling of the whole as discordant. Either feeling as the
case may be. The Harmony is felt as such, and so is the
Discord. Now Harmony is more than logical compatibility,
and Discord is more than logical incompatibility. Logicians
are not called in to advise artists. The key to the explana¬
tion is the understanding of the prehension of individuality.
This is the feeling of each objective factor as an individual
‘ It 5 with its own significance. The emotional significance
of an object as C/F, divorced from its qualitative aspects
at the moment presented, is one of the strongest forces

BEAUTY

337

in human nature. It is at the base of family affection, and
of the love of particular possessions. This trait is not a
peculiarity of mankind alone. A dog smells in order to find
out if the person in question is that It to which its affections
cling. The room, or stable, may be full of odours, many of
them for a dog sweeter. But he is not smelling for the
pleasure of that smell, but to discover that It who claims his
whole affection. An analogous substitute may deceive, but
when discovered never does as well. The analogy may claim
affection. But the original It commands a poignancy of
feeling. This type of interest is at the base of much in ar¬
chaeology — an inscribed stone, executed at the command of
and under the very eyes of Sennacherib. A really admirable
replica by a modern workman lacks interest, except for certain
purposes of scholarship. The worship of relics touches upon
the pathology of such concerns.

Undoubtedly the emotional value of particular individuality
arises from the generalization of emotions, so as to get rid
of their mere sensory elements. Such generalized emotional
qualities are love, admiration, the feeling of exquisiteness,
the feeling of worth, hate, horror, the general feeling of
association, that is of particular objects entwined with one’s
own existence. The successive immanence of occasion after
occasion in the life of the soul will in the present occasion
of that life include the cumulation of the successive pre¬
hensions of some particular object. In the various prehensions
of it new qualities secure prominence, original qualities
are present with some difference. There is thus a gradual
elimination of the more special types of quality, which
vary and fluctuate, from conformal effectiveness in the
tone of the final prehensions. Generalized aromas take
their place — the basic feelings of lifelong devotion, of life¬
long repulsion, or of aesthetic excellence. Thus the indica-

wi

22

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338

tion of that It , partly by its status in the pattern of experience
and partly by its immediate exhibition of minor qualities,
produces a strong sharp-cut emotional tone of dominating
significance. The significance is not merely for the general
complex of subjective form in the immediate percipient. It
is also reflected back on to the original objective It. Thus the
It which is indicated by minor details of a status and quality
is finally prehended in Appearance as It with its permanent
character.

For epistemology of the sensationalist school, this final
prehension is construed as an interpretation of original sense-
impressions. But in this final prehension there is no logical
train, inductive or deductive. The percipient directly inte¬
grates antecedent real functionings of that object in antecedent
occasions of the soul’s life. The so-called ‘interpretation’ is
the conflation of real history, and is not a top-dressing of
conjecture. The notion of purely qualitative sense-impressions
as the origin of experience has no warrant in direct intui¬
tion.

For the understanding of Harmony and Discord it is
essential to remember that strength of experience, in mas¬
siveness and in intensity, depends upon the substratum of
detail being composed of significant individuals. Appearance
has been constituted fortunately when it has simplified the
welter of occasions, individually insignificant, into a few
significant individual things. It has ‘interpreted’ the world
in terms of factors received from the world — so that each
factor of interpretation can be substantiated by direct in¬
tuition — if only consciousness can analyse so far. Such is
fortunate experience. It derives its strength from the con¬
currence of significant individual objects, and its own existence
adds to the significance of those objects. This is the enjoy¬
ment of Harmony, and a factor in this enjoyment is the

BEAUTY

339

intuition that the future, where its objective immortality
lies, is increasing the grounds for Harmony. Destruction is
absent.

But there can be intense experience without Harmony. In
this event, there is Destruction of the significant characters of
individual objects. When the direct feeling of such Destruction
dominates the whole, there is the immediate feeling of evil,
and the anticipation of destructive or weakened data for the
future. Harmony is bound up with the preservation of the
individual significance of detail, and Discord consists in its
destruction. In Discord there is always a frustration. But
even Discord may be preferable to a feeling of slow relapse
into general anaesthesia, or into tameness which is its prelude.
Perfection at a low level ranks below Imperfection with higher
aim.

A mere qualitative Harmony within an experience com¬
paratively barren of objects of high significance is a debased
type of Harmony, tame, vague, deficient in outline and in¬
tention. It is one property of a beautiful system of objects
that, as entertained in a succession of occasions adapted for
its enjoyment, it quickly builds up a system of apparent
objects with vigorous characters. The sculptures on the famous
porch of the Cathedral at Chartres at once assume individual
importance with definite character while performing their
office as details in the whole. There is not a mere pattern
of qualitative beauty. There are those statues, each with its
individual beauty, and all lending themselves to the beauty
of the whole. Enduring Individuality in the details is the
backbone of strong experience.

Art at its highest exemplifies the metaphysical doctrine of
the interweaving of absoluteness upon relativity. In the work
of art the relativity becomes the harmony of the composition,
and the absoluteness is the claim for separate individuality

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ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

advanced by component factors. We also understand how
Appearance leads to the Aristotelian doctrine of a substantial,
enduring It with essential character. The point of view ex¬
presses important truth. Hence its obviousness. The aesthetic
importance of this apparent individuality lies in its claim to
attention. In so far as Appearance has a truth-relation to
Reality such enduring individuality indicates a real society
important for its control of the future. The claim to aesthetic
attention thus represents the indirect importance of anticipa¬
tion and purpose as factors in the immediate enjoyment of
the immediate percipient. The danger of a street-crossing is
for the pedestrian a regulative factor in the aesthetic values
of the apparent scene. The concept of completely passive
contemplation in abstraction from action and purpose is a
fallacious extreme. It omits the final regulative factor in the
aesthetic complex. But of course there are large diversities
of action and large diversities of purpose. The final point is
that the foundation of Reality upon which Appearance rests
can never be neglected in the evaluation of Appearance.

CHAPTER XVIII

TRUTH AND BEAUTY

Section I. It appears from the discussion in the two
previous chapters of this Part that Beauty is a wider, and
more fundamental, notion than Truth. Of course both
terms have been used here in a very generalized sense. Nar¬
rower usages are not marked off from the wider meanings,
here employed, by anything except habitual presupposition
respecting importance and triviality. Beauty is the internal
conformation of the various items of experience with each
other, for the production of maximum effectiveness. Beauty
thus concerns the inter-relations of the various components
of Reality, and also the inter-relations of the various com¬
ponents of Appearance, and also the relations of Appearance
to Reality. Thus any part of experience can be beautiful.
The teleology of the Universe is directed to the production
of Beauty. Thus any system of things which in any wide
sense is beautiful is to that extent justified in its existence.
It may however fail in another sense, by inhibiting more
Beauty than it creates. Thus the system, though in a sense
beautiful, is on the whole evil in that environment. But
Truth has a narrower meaning in two ways. First, Truth,
in any important sense, merely concerns the relations of
Appearance to Reality. It is the conformation of Appearance
to Reality. But in the second place the notion of ‘con¬
formation’ in the case of Truth is narrower than that in the

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342

case of Beauty. For the truth-relation requires that the two
relata have some factor in common.

In itself, and apart from other factors, there seems to be
no special importance about the truth-relation. There is the
bare fact of a certain limited relationship of identity. There
is nothing in such a fact which will necessarily dictate any
corresponding type of subjective form within the percipient
occasion. Still less is there any reason why such influence as
a truth-relation does have upon subjective form should be
in the direction of the promotion of Beauty. In other words,
a truth-relation is not necessarily beautiful. It may not even
be neutral. It may be evil. Thus Beauty is left as the one
aim which by its very nature is self-justifying. The Discord
in the Universe arises from the fact that modes of Beauty
are various, and not of necessity compatible. And yet some
admixture of Discord is a necessary factor in the transition
from mode to mode. The objective life of the past and the
future in the present is an inevitable element of disturbance.
Discord may take the form of freshness or hope, or it may
be horror or pain. In the higher types of mentality the note
of displacement impresses its qualitative character upon
subjective form with peculiar keenness: welcome or an¬
tagonism. Wide purpose is in its own nature beautiful by
reason of its contribution to the massiveness of experience.
It increases the dimensions of the experient subject, adds to
its ambit. Then the destruction of immediate realizations
for the sake of purpose is, on the face of it, a sacrifice to
Harmony.

Section II. Notwithstanding the possible unseasonable¬
ness of the truth-relation, the general importance of Truth
for the promotion of Beauty is overwhelming. After all has
been said, yet the truth-relation remains the* simple, direct
mode of realizing Harmony. Other ways are indirect, and

TRUTH AND BEAUTY

343

indirectness is at the mercy of the environment. There is a
blunt force about Truth, which in the subjective form of its
prehension is akin to cleanliness — namely, the removal of
dirt, which is unwanted irrelevance. The sense of directness
which it carries with it, sustains the upstanding individualities
so necessary for the beauty of a complex. Falsehood is
corrosive.

Truth is various in its extent, its modes, and its relevance.
But an apparent object, beautiful beyond the hope of ante¬
cedent imagination, as it functions in experience is realizing
some hidden, penetrating Truth with a keenness beyond
compare. The type of Truth required for the final stretch
of Beauty is a discovery and not a recapitulation. The Truth
that for such extremity of Beauty is wanted is that truth-
relation whereby Appearance summons up new resources of
feeling from the depths of Reality. It is a Truth of feeling,
and not a Truth of verbalization. The relata in Reality must
lie below the stale presuppositions of verbal thought. The
Truth of supreme Beauty lies beyond the dictionary meanings
of words.

When Appearance has to Reality, in some important direct
sense, a truth-relation, there is a security about the Beauty
attained, that is to say, a pledge for the future.

From these functions of Truth in the service of Beauty,
the realization of Truth becomes in itself an element pro¬
moting Beauty of feeling. Consciousness, with its dim in¬
tuitions, welcomes a factor so generally on the right side, so
habitually necessary. The element of anticipation under the
influence of Truth is in a deep sense satisfied, and thus adds
a factor to the immediate Harmony. Thus Truth, in itself
and apart from special reasons to the contrary, becomes
self-justifying. It is accompanied by a sense of rightness
in the deepest Harmony. But Truth derives this self-justifying

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power from its services in the promotion of Beauty. Apart
from Beauty, Truth is neither good, nor bad.

Section III. Art is purposeful adaptation of Appearance
to Reality. Now ‘purposeful adaptation’ implies an end, to
be obtained with more or less success. This end, which is the
purpose of art, is two-fold — namely Truth and Beauty. The
perfection of art has only one end, which is Truthful Beauty.
But some measure of success has been reached, when either
Truth or Beauty is gained. In the absence of Truth, Beauty
is on a lower level, with a defect of massiveness. In the
absence of Beauty, Truth sinks to triviality. Truth matters
because of Beauty.

The relation of c appearance ’ to c reality ’ is such that in the
final phase of experience [‘satisfaction’ or 'anticipation’] the
reality of the primary phase is prehended with subjective
form as though it participated in the qualitative characters
of ‘ appearance ’ . When in fact the reality does so participate,
the relation is truthful. When it does not so participate, the
relation is falsifying.

Beauty, so far as concerns its exemplification in Appearance
alone, does not necessarily involve the attainment of Truth.
Appearance is beautiful when the qualitative objects which
compose it are interwoven in patterned contrasts, so that
the prehensions of the whole of its parts produces the fullest
harmony of mutual support. By this it is meant, that in so
far as the qualitative characters of the whole and the parts
pass into the subjective forms of their prehensions, the whole
heightens the feelings for the parts, and the parts heighten
the feelings for the whole, and for each other. This is harmony
of feeling; and with harmony of feeling its objective content
is beautiful.

It is evident that when appearance has obtained truth

TRUTH AND BEAUTY

345

in addition to beauty, harmony in a wider sense has been
produced. For in this sense, it also involves the relation of
appearance to reality. Thus, when the adaptation of ap¬
pearance to reality has obtained Truthful Beauty, there is a
perfection of art. That is to say, if there be art : for the result
may be the slow outcome of nature. Such an outcome may
be due to some wide universal purpose. But it will not be due
to quick purposeful adaptation originated by finite creatures,
the sort of adaptation usually termed art.

Goodness is the third member of the trinity which tradi¬
tionally has been assigned as the complex aim of art —
namely, Truth, Beauty, and Goodness. With the point of
view here adopted, Goodness must be denied a place among
the aims of art. For Goodness is a qualification belonging
to the constitution of reality, which in any of its individual
actualizations is better or worse. Good and evil lie in depths
and distances below and beyond appearance. They solely
concern inter-relations within the real world. The real
world is good when it is beautiful. Art has essentially to
do with perfections attainable by purposeful adaptation of
appearance. With a larger view and a deeper analysis, some
instance of the perfection of art may diminish the good
otherwise inherent in some specific situation as it passes into
its objective actuality for the future. Unseasonable art is
analogous to an unseasonable joke, namely, good in its place,
but out of place a positive evil. It is a curious fact that lovers
of art who are most insistent on the doctrine of ‘ art for art’s
sake’ are apt to be indignant at the banning of art for the
sake of other interests. The charge of immorality is not
refuted by pointing to the perfection of art. Of course it is
true that the defence of morals is the battle-cry which best
rallies stupidity against change. Perhaps countless ages ago

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

346

respectable amoebae refused to migrate from ocean to dry
land — refusing in defence of morals. One incidental service
of art to society lies in its adventurousness.

Section IV. It is a tribute to the strength of the sheer
craving for freshness, that change, whose justification lies in
aim at the distant ideal, should be promoted by Art which
is the adaptation of immediate Appearance for immediate
Beauty. Art neglects the safety of the future for the gain
of the present. In so doing it is apt to render its Beauty
thin. But after all, there must be some immediate harvest.
The good of the Universe cannot lie in indefinite postpone¬
ment. The Day of Judgment is an important notion: but
that Day is always with us. Thus Art takes care of the
immediate fruition, here and now; and in so doing is apt to
lose some depth by reason of the immediate fruition at
which it is aiming. Its business is to render the Day of
Judgment a success, now. The effect of the present on the
future is the business of morals. And yet the separation is
not so easy. For the inevitable anticipation adds to the
present a qualitative element which profoundly affects its
whole qualitative harmony.

There is a paradox concerning morals to be added to the
one concerning art. Morals consists in the aim at the ideal,
and at its lowest it concerns the prevention of relapse to
lower levels. Thus stagnation is the deadly foe of morality.
Yet in human society the champions of morality are on the
whole the fierce opponents of new ideals. Mankind has been
afflicted with low- toned moralists, objecting to expulsion
from some Garden of Eden. And in a way they are right. For
after all we can aim at nothing except from the standpoint of
a well-assimilated system of customs — that is, of mores. The
fortunate changes are made ‘Hand in hand, with wand’ring
steps and slow5.

TRUTH AND BEAUTY

347

Section V. The factor in experience that renders Art
possible is consciousness.1 Of course consciousness, like
everything else, is in a sense indefinable. It is just itself and
must be experienced. But, also like other things, it is the
emergent quality illustrated in the essence of a conjunction
of circumstances. It is a qualitative aspect of that conjunction.
We can ask therefore for an analysis of the details whose
conjunction in experience issues in consciousness.

Consciousness is that quality which emerges into the ob¬
jective content as the result of the conjunction of a fact and
a supposition about that fact. It passes conformally from the
complex object to the subjective form of the prehension. It
is the quality inherent in the contrast between Actuality and
Ideality, that is, between the products of the physical pole
and the mental pole in experience. When that contrast is a
feeble element in experience, then consciousness is there merely
in germ, as a latent capacity. So far as the contrast is well-
defined and prominent, the occasion includes a developed
consciousness. That portion of experience irradiated by con¬
sciousness is only a selection. Thus consciousness is a mode
of attention. It provides the extreme of selective emphasis.
The spontaneity of an occasion finds its chief outlets, first
in the direction of consciousness, and secondly in production
of ideas to pass into the area of conscious attention. Thus
consciousness, spontaneity, and art are closely interconnected.
But that art which arises within clear consciousness is only
a specialization of the more widely distributed art within
dim consciousness or within the unconscious activities of
experience.

Consciousness is the weapon which strengthens the arti¬
ficiality of an occasion of experience. It raises the impor-

1 Cf. Process and Reality , Part n, Chapter vn, Section II, and Part in,
Chapter n, Section IV, and Chapters iv and v.

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

348

tance of the final Appearance relatively to that of the initial
Reality. Thus it is Appearance which in consciousness is
clear and distinct, and it is Reality which lies dimly in the
background with its details hardly to be distinguished in
consciousness. What leaps into conscious attention is a mass
of presuppositions about Reality rather than the intuitions
of Reality itself. It is here that the liability to error arises.
The deliverances of clear and distinct consciousness require
criticism by reference to elements in experience which are
neither clear nor distinct. On the contrary, they are dim,
massive, and important. These dim elements provide for art
that final background of tone apart from which its effects
fade. The type of Truth which human art seeks lies in the
eliciting of this background to haunt the object presented for
clear consciousness.

Section VI. The merit of Art in its service to civilization
lies in its artificiality and its finiteness. It exhibits for con¬
sciousness a finite fragment of human effort achieving its
own perfection within its own limits. Thus the mere toil for
the slavish purpose of prolonging life for more toil or for
mere bodily gratification, is transformed into the conscious
realization of a self-contained end, timeless within time.
The work of Art is a fragment of nature with the mark on
it of a finite creative effort, so that it stands alone, an in¬
dividual thing detailed from the vague infinity of its back¬
ground. Thus Art heightens the sense of humanity. It gives
an elation of feeling which is supernatural. A sunset is
glorious, but it dwarfs humanity and belongs to the general
flow of nature. A million sunsets will not spur on men
towards civilization. It requires Art to evoke into conscious¬
ness the finite perfections which lie ready for human
achievement.

Consciousness itself is the product of art in its lowliest

TRUTH AND BEAUTY

349

form. For it results from the influx of ideality into its contrast
with reality, with the purpose of reshaping the latter into a
finite, select appearance. But consciousness having emerged
from Art at once produces the new specialized art of the
conscious animals — in particular human art. In a sense art
is a morbid overgrowth of functions which lie deep in nature.
It is the essence of art to be artificial. But it is its perfection
to return to nature, remaining art. In short art is the educa¬
tion of nature. Thus, in its broadest sense, art is civilization.
For civilization is nothing other than the unremitting aim at
the major perfections of harmony.

Section VII. The human body is an instrument for the
production of art in the life of the human soul. It concen¬
trates upon those elements in human experience selected for
conscious perception intensities of subjective form derived
from components dismissed into shadow. It thereby en¬
hances the value of that appearance which is the subject-
matter for art. In this way the work of art is a message
from the Unseen. It unlooses depths of feeling from behind
the frontier where precision of consciousness fails. The
starting-point for the highly developed human art is thus to
be sought amid the cravings generated by the physiological
functionings of the body. The origin of art lies in the craving
for re-enaction. In some mode of repetition we need by
our personal actions, or perceptions, to dramatize the past
and the future, so as to re-live the emotional life of our¬
selves, and of our ancestors. There is a biological law —
which however must not be pressed too far — that in some
vague sense the embryo in the womb reproduces in its life-
history features of ancestors in remote geologic epochs. Thus
art has its origin in ceremonial 1 evolutions from which
issue play, religious ritual, tribal ceremonial, dance, pictures

1 Cf. Religion in the Making , Chapter i, Section III.

35°

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

on caves, poetic literature, prose, music. In this list each
member in its simpler forms enshrines some effort to reproduce
a vivid experience flashed out among the necessities of daily
life. But the secret of art lies in its freedom. The emotion and
some elements of the experience itself are lived again divorced
from their necessity. The strain is over, but the joy of intense
feeling remains. Originally the intensity arose from some
dire necessity ; but in art it has outlived the compulsion which
was its origin. If Odysseus among the shades could hear
Homer chanting his Odyssey, he then re-enacted with free
enjoyment the perils of his wanderings.

The arts of civilization now spring from many origins,
physical and purely imaginative. But they are all sublimations,
and sublimations of sublimations, of the simple craving to
enjoy freely the vividness of life which first arises in moments
of necessity. With a slight shift of the focus of our attention,
Art can be described as a psychopathic reaction of the race
to the stresses of its existence. From that point of view,
Odysseus as he listened to Homer was evading the Furies.
This psychopathic function of Art is lost when the conviction
of Truth is absent. It is here that the concept of Art as the
pursuit of Beauty is shallow. Art has a curative function
in human experience when it reveals as in a flash intimate,
absolute Truth regarding the Nature of Things. This service
of Art is even hindered by trivial truths of detail. Such petty
conformations place in the foreground the superficialities of
sense-experience. Art performing this great service belongs
to the essence of civilization. By the growth of such Art
the adventure of mentality gains upon the physical basis of
existence.

Science and Art are the consciously determined pursuit
of Truth and of Beauty. In them the finite conscious¬
ness of mankind is appropriating as its own the infinite

TRUTH AND BEAUTY

351

fecundity of nature. In this movement of the human spirit
types of institutions and types of professions are evolved.
Churches and Rituals, Monasteries with their dedicated lives,
Universities with their search for knowledge, Medicine, Law,
methods of Trade — they all represent that aim at civilization,
whereby the conscious experience of mankind preserves for
its use the sources of Harmony.

CHAPTER XIX

ADVENTURE

Section I. The notion of civilization is very baffling. We
all know what it means. It suggests a certain ideal for life
on this earth, and this ideal concerns both the individual
human being and also societies of men. A man can be
civilized, and a whole society can be civilized; although the
senses are somewhat different in the two cases.

Yet civilization is one of those general notions that are
very difficult to define. We pronounce upon particular in¬
stances. We can say this is civilized, or that is savage. Yet
somehow the general notion is elusive. Thus we proceed
by examples. During the last six centuries, the culture of
Europe has guided itself by example. The Greeks and
Romans at their best period have been taken as the standard
of civilization. We have aimed at reproducing the excellencies
of these societies — preferably the society of Athens in its
prime.

These standards have served the Western races well. But
the procedure has its disadvantages. It is backward looking,
and it is limited to one type of social excellence. To-day the
world is passing into a new stage of its existence. New
knowledge, and new technologies have altered the propor¬
tions of things. The particular example of an ancient society
sets too static an ideal, and neglects the whole range of op¬
portunity. It is really not sufficient to direct attention to the
best that has been said and done in the ancient world. The

ADVENTURE 353

result is static, repressive, and promotes a decadent habit of
mind.

Also I suggest that the Greeks themselves were not back¬
ward looking, or static. Compared to their neighbours, they
were singularly unhistorical. They were speculative, ad¬
venturous, eager for novelty. The most un-Greek thing that
we can do is to copy the Greeks. For emphatically they were
not copyists.

Another danger in forming our notions of civilization is
to concentrate exclusively upon passive, critical qualities
concerned chiefly with the Fine Arts. Such qualities are an
important element in a civilized society. But civilization is
more than the appreciation of the Fine Arts. We must not tie
it down to museums and studios.

I put forward as a general definition of civilization, that
a civilized society is exhibiting the five qualities of Truth,
Beauty, Adventure, Art, Peace.

Here by the last quality of Peace I am not referring to
political relations. I mean a quality of mind steady in its
reliance that fine action is treasured in the nature of things.

It is impossible in the short space of five chapters to discuss
all the various questions which are suggested by these notions.
In this chapter I will concentrate upon a few points in
philosophy and history which throw light upon the various
functions of these elements in civilization.

Section II. From the three preceding chapters and with
this short explanation as to Peace, let us assume for the
moment that Truth, Beauty, and Peace are sufficiently obvious
as to their meanings. We will now concentrate upon Ad¬
venture and Art as necessary elements in civilization. It is
in respect to these two factors that prevalent concepts of
civilization are weakest.

The foundation of all understanding of sociological

23

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ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

theory — that is to say, of all understanding of human life —
is that no static maintenance of perfection is possible. This
axiom is rooted in the nature of things. Advance or De¬
cadence are the only choices offered to mankind. The pure
conservative is fighting against the essence of the Universe.
This doctrine requires justification. It is implicitly denied in
the learned tradition derived from ancient thought.

The doctrine is founded upon three metaphysical principles.
One principle is that the very essence of real actuality —
that is, of the completely real — is process. Thus each actual
thing is only to be understood in terms of its becoming and
perishing. There is no halt in which the actuality is just
its static self, accidentally played upon by qualifications
derived from the shift of circumstances. The converse is the
truth.

The static notion, here rejected, is derived by two different
paths from ancient thought. Plato in the earlier period of
his thought, deceived by the beauty of mathematics intelli¬
gible in unchanging perfection, conceived of a super-world
of ideas, for ever perfect and for ever interwoven. In his
latest phase he sometimes repudiates the notion, though he
never consistently banishes it from his thought. His later
Dialogues circle round seven notions, namely — The Ideas,
The Physical Elements, The Psyche, The Eros, The Harmony,
The Mathematical Relations, The Receptacle. I mention
them because I hold that all philosophy is in fact an en¬
deavour to obtain a coherent system out of some modification
of these notions. They largely explain themselves as to
their general meanings, apart from any precise co-ordination.
The Psyche is, of course, the Soul; the Eros is the urge
towards the realization of ideal perfection. The Receptacle
is expressly stated by Plato to be a difficult notion ; so that we
may safely put aside easy explanations of it. I explain it to

ADVENTURE

355

myself as the conception of the essential unity of the Universe
conceived as an actuality, and yet in abstraction from the
‘life and motion’ in which all actualities must partake. If we
omit the Psyche and the Eros, we should obtain a static world.
The ‘life and motion’, which are essentials in Plato’s later
thought, are derived from the operation of these two factors.
But Plato left no system of metaphysics.

Thus in the modern development of these seven meta¬
physical notions, we should start from the notion of actuality
as in its essence a process. This process involves a physical
side which is the perishing of the past as it transforms itself
into a new creation. It also involves a mental side which is
the Soul entertaining ideas.

The Souf thereby by synthesis creates a new fact which is
the Appearance woven out of the old and the new — a com¬
pound of reception and anticipation, which in its turn passes
into the future. The final synthesis of these three complexes
is the end to which its indwelling Eros urges the soul. Its
good resides in the realization of a strength of many feelings
fortifying each other as they meet in the novel unity. Its evil
lies in the clash of vivid feelings, denying to each other their
proper expansion. Its triviality lies in the anaesthesia by
which evil is avoided. In this way through sheer omission,
fewer, fainter feelings constitute the final Appearance. Evil
is the half-way house between perfection and triviality. It is
the violence of strength against strength.

Aristotle introduced the static fallacy by another concept
which has infected all subsequent philosophy. He conceived
of primary substances as the static foundations which re¬
ceived the impress of qualification. In the case of human
experience, a modern version of the same notion is Locke’s
metaphor of the mind as an ‘empty cabinet’ receiving the
impress of ideas. Thus for Locke the reality does not reside

23-2

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

356

n

in the process but in the static recipient of process. According
to the versions of Aristotle and Locke, one primary substance
cannot be a component in the nature of another primary
substance. Thus the interconnections of primary substances
must be devoid of the substantial reality of the primary
substances themselves. With this doctrine, the conjunction of
actualities has, in various shapes, been a problem throughout
modern philosophy — both for metaphysics and for epistemo¬
logy. The taint of Aristotelian Logic has thrown the whole
emphasis of metaphysical thought upon substantives and
adjectives, to the neglect of prepositions and conjunctions.
This Aristotelian doctrine is in this book summarily denied.
The process is itself the actuality, and requires no antecedent
static cabinet. Also the processes of the past, in their perishing,
are themselves energizing as the complex origin of each
novel occasion. The past is the reality at the base of each
new actuality. The process is its absorption into a new unity
with ideals and with anticipation, by the operation of the
creative Eros.

Section III. I now pass to the second metaphysical prin¬
ciple. It is the doctrine that every occasion of actuality is
in its own nature finite. There is no totality which is the
harmony of all perfections. Whatever is realized in any one
occasion of experience necessarily excludes the unbounded
welter of contrary possibilities. There are always ‘others’,
which might have been and are not. This finiteness is not
the result of evil, or of imperfection. It results from the fact
that there are possibilities of harmony which either produce
evil in joint realization, or are incapable of such conjunction.
This doctrine is a commonplace in the fine arts. It also is — or
should be — a commonplace of political philosophy. History
can only be understood by seeing it as the theatre of diverse
groups of idealists respectively urging ideals incompatible

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for conjoint realization. You cannot form any historical
judgment of right or wrong by considering each group
separately. The evil lies in the attempted conjunction.

This principle of intrinsic incompatibility has an im¬
portant bearing upon our conception of the nature of God.
The concept of impossibility such that God himself cannot
surmount it, has been for centuries quite familiar to theo¬
logians. Indeed, apart from it there would be difficulty in
conceiving any determinate divine nature. But curiously
enough, so far as I know, this notion of incompatibility has
never been applied to ideals in the Divine realization. We
must conceive the Divine Eros as the active entertainment
of all ideals, with the urge to their finite realization, each in
its due season. Thus a process must be inherent in God’s
nature, whereby his infinity is acquiring realization.

It is unnecessary to pursue theology further. But the point
stands out that the conceptual entertainment of incompati¬
bilities is possible, and so is their conceptual comparison.
Also there is the synthesis of conceptual entertainment with
physical realization. The idea conceptually entertained may
be identical with the idea exemplified in the physical fact;
or it may be different, compatible or incompatible. This
synthesis of the ideal with the real is just what happens in
each finite occasion.

Thus in every civilization at its culmination we should
find a large measure of realization of a certain type of
perfection. This type will be complex and will admit of
variation of detail, this way or that. The culmination can
maintain itself at its height so long as fresh experimentation
within the type is possible. But when these minor variations
are exhausted, one of two things must happen. Perhaps the
society in question lacks imaginative force. Staleness then
sets in. Repetition produces a gradual lowering of vivid

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appreciation. Convention dominates. A learned orthodoxy
suppresses adventure.

The last flicker of originality is exhibited by the survival of
satire. Satire does not necessarily imply a decadent society,
though it flourishes upon the outworn features in the social
system. It was characteristic that at the close of the silver
age of Roman culture, shortly after the deaths of the younger
Pliny and of Tacitus, the satirist Lucian was born. Again, at
the close of the silver age of the Renaissance culture, during
the eighteenth century, Voltaire and Edward Gibbon per¬
fected satire in their various styles. Satire was natural to
the age as it neared the American Revolution, the French
Revolution, and the Industrial Revolution. Again a new
epoch arose, the first phase of modern industrialism. It
flourished with consistent growth for a hundred and fifty
years. Its central period has been termed the Victorian
Epoch. Within that period, the European races created new
methods of industry; they peopled North America; they
developed trade with the old civilizations of Asia; they gave
new directions to literature and to art; they re-fashioned
their forms of government. The nineteenth century was an
epoch of civilized advance — humanitarian, scientific, indus¬
trial, literary, political. But at length it wore itself out. The
crash of the Great War marked its end, and marked the
decisive turn of human life into some new direction as yet
not fully understood. But the close of the epoch has been
marked by the rise of satire— Lytton Strachey in England,
Sinclair Lewis in the United States of America. Satire is the
last flicker of originality in a passing epoch as it faces the
onroad of staleness and boredom. Freshness has gone: bitter¬
ness remains. The prolongation of outworn forms of life
means a slow decadence in which there is repetition without
any fruit in the reaping of value. There may be high survival

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power. For decadence, undisturbed by originality or by
external forces, is a slow process. But the values of life are
slowly ebbing. There remains the show of civilization, without
any of its realities.

There is an alternative to this slow decline. A race may
exhaust a form of civilization without having exhausted its
own creative springs of originality. In that case, a quick
period of transition may set it, which may or may not be
accompanied by dislocations involving widespread unhappi¬
ness. Such periods are Europe at the close of the Middle
Ages, Europe during the comparatively long Reformation
Period, Europe at the end of the eighteenth century. Also
let us hope that our present epoch is to be viewed as a period
of change to a new direction of civilization, involving in its
dislocations a minimum of human misery. And yet surely
the misery of the Great War was sufficient for any change
of epoch.

These quick transitions to new types of civilization are
only possible when thought has run ahead of realization.
The vigour of the race has then pushed forward into the
adventure of imagination, so as to anticipate the physical
adventures of exploration. The world dreams of things to
come, and then in due season arouses itself to their realiza¬
tion. Indeed all physical adventure which is entered upon
of set purpose involves an adventure of thought regarding
things as yet unrealized. Before Columbus set sail for America,
he had dreamt of the Far East, and of the round world, and
of the trackless ocean. Adventure rarely reaches its pre¬
determined end. Columbus never reached China. But he
discovered America.

Sometimes adventure is acting within limits. It can then
calculate its end, and reach it. Such adventures are the
ripples of change within one type of civilization, by which

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

36°

an epoch of given type preserves its freshness. But, given the
vigour of adventure, sooner or later the leap of imagination
reaches beyond the safe limits of the epoch, and beyond the
safe limits of learned rules of taste. It then produces the
dislocations and confusions marking the advent of new ideals
for civilized effort.

A race preserves its vigour so long as it harbours a real
contrast between what has been and what may be; and so
long as it is nerved by the vigour to adventure beyond the
safeties of the past. Without adventure civilization is in full
decay.

It is for this reason that the definition of culture as the
knowledge of the best that has been said and done, is so
dangerous by reason of its omission. It omits the great fact
that in their day the great achievements of the past were
the adventures of the past. Only the adventurous can un¬
derstand the greatness of the past. In its day, the literature
of the past was an adventure. Aesychlus, Sophocles, Euripides
were adventurers in the world of thought. To read their plays
without any sense of new ways of understanding the world
and of savouring its emotions is to miss the vividness which
constitutes their whole value. But adventures are to the
adventurous. Thus a passive knowledge of the past loses the
whole value of its message. A living civilization requires
learning; but it lies beyond it.

Section IV. The third metaphysical principle may be
termed the principle of Individuality. It concerns the doc¬
trine of Harmony; and its omission is, I think, the greatest
gap in traditional discussions of that doctrine. Indeed, in
recent times, with the predominance of the sensationalist
doctrine of perception, modern views of the Harmony cha¬
racterizing a great experience have reached their lowest point.
This sensationalist doctrine concentrates attention upon a

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361

mere qualitative harmony within an experience compara¬
tively barren of objects of high significance. The complex
to which the term Harmony is applicable is conceived as a
mere spatio-temporal pattern of sensa. The Harmony to be
derived from such a complex belongs to a debased type —
tame, vague, deficient in outline and intention. At the best,
it can only excite by a sense of strangeness. At the worst, it
fades into insignificance. It lacks any strong, exciting element
capable of stirring the depths of feeling. Sense-perception,
despite its prominence in consciousness, belongs to the super¬
ficialities of experience. It is here that the Aristotelian
doctrine of primary substances has done some of its worst
harm. For according to this doctrine no individual primary
substance can enter into the complex of objects observed in
any occasion of experience. The qualifications of the soul are
thus confined to universals. According to the metaphysical
system that I suggest to you, this Aristotelian doctrine is a
complete mistake. The individual, real facts of the past lie
at the base of our immediate experience in the present. They
are the reality from which the occasion springs, the reality
from which it derives its source of emotion, from which it
inherits its purposes, to which it directs its passions. At the
base of experience there is a welter of feeling, derived from
individual realities or directed towards them. Thus for
strength of experience we require to discriminate the com¬
ponent factors, each as an individual ‘It' with its own
significance.

Our lives are dominated by enduring things, each ex¬
perienced as a unity of many occasions bound together by
the force of inheritance. Each such individual endurance
collects into its unity the shifting qualities of its many
occasions. Perhaps it is the thing we love, or perhaps it is
the thing we hate. There is a bare ‘It' — a real fact of the past,

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362

stretching into the present, which concentrates upon itself
the wealth of emotion derived from its many occasions.
Such enduring individualities, as factors in experience, con¬
trol a wealth of feeling, an amplitude of purpose, and a
regulative power to subdue into background the residue of
things belonging to the immensity of the past. Surely this
is what Descartes must have meant by the realitas objectiva
which, according to his doctrine, clings more or less to our
perceptions.

A complex experience which includes conscious attention
to such enduring individualities at once unlooses a wealth
of feeling far beyond anything derived from patterns of
sensa, merely as such. The great Harmony is the harmony
of enduring individualities, connected in the unity of a back-
ground. It is for this reason that the notion of freedom
haunts the higher civilizations. For freedom, in any one of
its many senses, is the claim for vigorous self-assertion.

In considering the process which constitutes the existence
of an occasion of experience, the perception of the enduring
individuals must belong to the final Appearance wherein
the occasion terminates. For in the primary phase, the past
is initiating the process in virtue of the energizing of its
diverse individual occasions. This is the Reality from which
the new occasion springs. The process is urged onward by
operation of the mental pole providing conceptual subject-
matter for synthesis with the Reality. There finally emerges
the Appearance, which is the transformed Reality after
synthesis with the conceptual valuations. The Appearance
is a simplification by a process of emphasis and combina¬
tion. Thus the enduring individuals, with their wealth of
emotional significance, appear in the foreground. In the
background there lies a mass of undistinguished occasions
providing the environment with its vague emotional tone. In

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363

a general sense, the Appearance is a work of Art, elicited
from the primary Reality. In so far as the Appearance em¬
phasizes connections and qualities of connections which in
fact reside in the Reality, then the Appearance is truthful in
its relation to Reality. But the Appearance may have effected
connections, and have introduced qualities, which have no
counterpart in Reality. In that case, the occasion of ex¬
perience contains in itself a falsehood, namely the discon¬
nection of its Appearance from its Reality. In any case, the
Appearance is a simplification of Reality, reducing it to a
foreground of enduring individuals and to a background of
undiscriminated occasions. Sense-perception belongs to Ap¬
pearance. It is interpreted as indicating enduring individuals,
truthfully or otherwise.

Thus, the basis of a strong, penetrating experience of
Harmony is an Appearance with a foreground of enduring
individuals carrying with them a force of subjective tone,
and with a background providing the requisite connection.
Undoubtedly, the Harmony is finally a Harmony of qualitative
feelings. But the introduction of the enduring individuals
evokes from the Reality a force of already harmonized
feelings which no surface show of sensa can produce. It is
not a question of intellectual interpretation. There is a real
conflation of fundamental feeling.

Thus, civilization in its aim at fineness of feeling should so
arrange its social relations, and the relations of its members
to their natural environment, as to evoke into the experiences
of its members Appearances dominated by the harmonies
of forceful enduring things. In other words, Art should
aim at the production of individuality in the component
details of its compositions. It cannot trust to a mere com¬
position of qualities. In that case, it becomes tame and vapid.
It must create, so that in the experience of the beholder

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364

there appear Individuals as it were immortal by their appeal
to the deep recesses of feeling. For this reason, it is hardly
a paradox to say, that a great civilization interfused with Art
presents the world to its members clothed with the Appearance
of immortality. The Individuals it presents for Appearance
belong equally to all time.

This is exactly what we find in great Art. The very details
of its compositions live supremely in their own right. They
make their own claim to individuality, and yet contribute to
the whole. Each such detail receives an access of grandeur
from the whole, and yet manifests an individuality claiming
attention in its own right.

As an example, the sculpture and the tracery in a Gothic
cathedral — Chartres for instance — subserve the harmony.
They lead the eye upward to the vaulting above, and they
lead the eye onward horizontally to the supreme symbolism
of the altar. They claim attention by their beauty of detail.
Yet they shun attention by guiding the eye to grasp the
significance of the whole. Yet the sculpture and the tracery
could not perform this service apart from their supreme in¬
dividuality, evoking a wealth of feeling in their own right.
Each detail claims a permanent existence for its own sake,
and then surrenders it for the sake of the whole composition.

Again, the value of discord arises from this importance of
the forceful individuality of the details. The discord enhances
the whole, when it serves to substantiate the individuality
of the parts. It brings into emphatic feeling their claim to
existence in their own right. It rescues the whole from the
tameness of a merely qualitative harmony.

Also the importance of truth now emerges. Truth of belief
is important, both in itself and in its consequences. But above
all, there emerges the importance of the truthful relation of
Appearance to Reality. A grave defect in truth limits the

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365

extent to which any force of feeling can be summoned
from the recesses of Reality. The falsehood thus lacks the
magic by which a beauty beyond the power of speech to
express can be called into being, as if by the wand of an
enchanter. It is for these reasons that the civilization of a
society requires the virtues of Truth, Beauty, Adventure and
Art.

CHAPTER XX

PEACE

Section I. Our discussions have concerned themselves
with specializations in History, of seven Platonic generalities,
namely, The Ideas, The Physical Elements, The Psyche,
The Eros, The Harmony, The Mathematical Relations, The
Receptacle. The historical references have been selected and
grouped with the purpose of illustrating the energizing of
specializations of these seven general notions among the
peoples of Western Europe, driving them towards their
civilization.

Finally, in this fourth and last Part of the book, those
essential qualities, whose joint realization in social life con¬
stitutes civilization, are being considered. Four such qualities
have, so far, been examined: Truth, Beauty, Adventure,
Art.

Section II. Something is still lacking. It is difficult to
state it in terms that are wide enough. Also, where clearly
distinguished and exposed in all its bearings, it assumes an
air of exaggeration. Habitually it is lurking on the edge of
consciousness, a modifying agency. It clings to our notion of
the Platonic ‘Harmony’, as a sort of atmosphere. It is some¬
what at variance with the notion of the ‘Eros’. Also the
Platonic ‘ Ideas ’ and ‘ Mathematical Relations ’ seem to kill it
by their absence of ‘life and motion’. Apart from it, the pur¬
suit of ‘Truth, Beauty, Adventure, Art’ can be ruthless, hard,
cruel; and thus, as the history of the Italian Renaissance

PEACE

367

illustrates, lacking in some essential quality of civilization.
The notions of ‘tenderness5 and of ‘love5 are too narrow,
important though they be. We require the concept of some
more general quality, from which ‘tenderness5 emerges as
a specialization. We are in a way seeking for the notion of
a Harmony of Harmonies, which shall bind together the
other four qualities, so as to exclude from our notion of
civilization the restless egotism with which they have often
in fact been pursued. ‘Impersonality5 is too dead a notion,
and ‘Tenderness5 too narrow. I choose the term ‘Peace5 for
that Harmony of Harmonies which calms destructive tur¬
bulence and completes civilization. Thus a society is to
be termed civilized whose members participate in the five
qualities — Truth, Beauty, Adventure, Art, Peace.

Section III. The Peace that is here meant is not the nega¬
tive conception of anaesthesia. It is a positive feeling which
crowns the ‘life and motion5 of the soul. It is hard to define
and difficult to speak of. It is not a hope for the future,
nor is it an interest in present details. It is a broadening of
feeling due to the emergence of some deep metaphysical in¬
sight, unverbalized and yet momentous in its co-ordination
of values. Its first effect is the removal of the stress of acquisi¬
tive feeling arising from the soul’s preoccupation with itself.
Thus Peace carries with it a surpassing of personality.
There is an inversion of relative values. It is primarily a
trust in the efficacy of Beauty. It is a sense that fineness of
achievement is as it were a key unlocking treasures that the
narrow nature of things would keep remote. There is thus
involved a grasp of infinitude, an appeal beyond boundaries.
Its emotional effect is the subsidence of turbulence which
inhibits. More accurately, it preserves the springs of energy,
and at the same time masters them for the avoidance of
paralysing distractions. The trust in the self-justification

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368

of Beauty introduces faith, where reason fails to reveal the
details.

The experience of Peace is largely beyond the control of
purpose. It comes as a gift. The deliberate aim at Peace
very easily passes into its bastard substitute, Anaesthesia. In
other words, in the place of a quality of ‘life and motion5,
there is substituted their destruction. Thus Peace is the re¬
moval of inhibition and not its introduction. It results in a
wider sweep of conscious interest. It enlarges the field of
attention. Thus Peace is self-control at its widest — at the
width where the ‘self5 has been lost, and interest has been
transferred to co-ordinations wider than personality. Here
the real motive interests of the spirit are meant, and not
the superficial play of discursive ideas. Peace is helped by
such superficial width, and also promotes it. In fact it is
largely for this reason that Peace is so essential for civiliza¬
tion. It is the barrier against narrowness. One of its fruits
is that passion whose existence Hume denied, the love of
mankind as such.

Section IV. The meaning of Peace is most clearly under¬
stood by considering it in its relation to the tragic issues
which are essential in the nature of things. Peace is the
understanding of tragedy, and at the same time its pre¬
servation.

We have seen that there can be no real halt of civilization
in the indefinite repetition of a perfected ideal. Staleness sets
in. And this fatigue is nothing other than the creeping
growth of anaesthesia, whereby that social group is gradually
sinking towards nothingness. The defining characteristics are
losing their importance. There may be no pain or conscious
loss. There is merely a slow paralysis of surprise. And apart
from surprise, intensity of feeling collapses.

Decay, Transition, Loss, Displacement belong to the

PEACE 369

essence of the Creative Advance. The new direction of aim
is initiated by Spontaneity, an element of confusion. The
enduring Societies with their rise, culmination, and decay,
are devices to combine the necessities of Harmony and Fresh¬
ness. There is the deep underlying Harmony of Nature, as it
were a fluid, flexible support; and on its surface the ripples
of social efforts, harmonizing and clashing in their aims at
ways of satisfaction. The lower types of physical objects can
have a vast endurance of inorganic life. The higher types,
involving animal life and the dominance of a personality
primarily mental, preserve their zest by the quick succession
of stages from birth, culmination, to death. As soon as high
consciousness is reached, the enjoyment of existence is
entwined with pain, frustration, loss, tragedy. Amid the
passing of so much beauty, so much heroism, so much daring,
Peace is then the intuition of permanence. It keeps vivid
the sensitiveness to the tragedy; and it sees the tragedy as
a living agent persuading the world to aim at fineness beyond
the faded level of surrounding fact. Each tragedy is the
disclosure of an ideal — What might have been, and was not :
What can be. The tragedy was not in vain. This survival
power in motive force, by reason of appeal to reserves of
Beauty, marks the difference between the tragic evil and
the gross evil. The inner feeling belonging to this grasp
of the service of tragedy is Peace — the purification of the
emotions.

Section V. The deepest definition of Youth is, Life as yet
untouched by tragedy. And the finest flower of youth is to
know the lesson in advance of the experience, undimmed.
The question here for discussion is how the intuition of Peace
asserts itself apart from its disclosure in tragedy. Evidently
observation of the earlier stages of personal life will afford the
clearest evidence.

WI

24

370

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

Youth is distinguished for its whole-hearted absorption
in personal enjoyments and personal discomforts. Quick
pleasure and quick pain, quick laughter and quick tears,
quick absence of care, and quick diffidence, quick courage
and quick fear, are conjointly characters of youth. In other
words, immediate absorption in its own occupations. On
this side, youth is too chequered to be termed a happy
period. It is vivid rather than happy. The memories of
youth are better to live through, than is youth itself. For
except in extreme cases, memory is apt to count the sunny
hours. Youth is not peaceful in any ordinary sense of that
term. In youth despair is overwhelming. There is then no
to-morrow, no memory of disasters survived.

The short-sightedness of youth matches the scantiness of
its experience. The issues of its action are beyond its ken,
perhaps with literature supplying a delusory sense of know¬
ledge. Thus generosity and cruelty are equally natural, by
reason of the fact that their full effects lie beyond conscious
anticipation.

All this is the veriest commonplace in the characterization
of youth. Nor does the modern wealth of social literature
in any fundamental way alter the case. The reason for its
statement here is to note that these features of character
belong to all animals at all ages, including human beings at
every stage of their lives. The differences only lie in relative
proportions. Also the success of language in conveying in¬
formation is vastly over-rated, especially in learned circles.
Not only is language highly elliptical, but also nothing can
supply the defect of first-hand experience of types cognate
to the things explicitly mentioned. The general truth of
Hume’s doctrine as to the necessity of first-hand impressions
is inexorable.

There is another side. Youth is peculiarly susceptible to

PEACE

371

appeals for beauty of conduct. It understands motives which
presuppose the irrelevance of its own person. Such motives
are understood as contributing to the magnification of its
own interests. Its very search for personal experience thus
elicits impersonality, self-forgetfulness. Youth forgets itself
in its own ardour. Of course, not always. For it can fall in
love. But the test of the better nature, so happily plenti¬
ful, is that love passes from selfishness to devotion. The
higher forms of love break down the narrow self-regarding
motives.

When youth has once grasped where Beauty dwells —
with a real knowledge and not as a mere matter of literary
phraseology in some poetic, scriptural, or psychological ver¬
sion — when youth has once grasped, its self-surrender is
absolute. The vision may pass. It may traverse consciousness
in a flash. Some natures may never permit it to emerge into
attention. But youth is peculiarly liable to the vision of that
Peace, which is the harmony of the soul’s activities with ideal
aims that lie beyond any personal satisfaction.

Section VI. The vigour of civilized societies is preserved
by the widespread sense that high aims are worth while.
Vigorous societies harbour a certain extravagance of ob¬
jectives, so that men wander beyond the safe provision of
personal gratifications. All strong interests easily become
impersonal, the love of a good job well done. There is a sense
of harmony about such an accomplishment, the Peace brought
by something worth while. Such personal gratification arises
from aim beyond personality.

The converse tendency is at least equally noticeable;
the egotistic desire for fame — ‘that last infirmity5 — is an
inversion of the social impulse, and yet presupposes it. The
tendency shows itself in the trivialities of child-life, as well
as in the career of some conqueror before whom mankind

24-2

372

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

trembled. In the widest sense, it is the craving for sympathy.
It involves the feeling that each act of experience is a central
reality, claiming all things as its own. The world has then
no justification except as a satisfaction of such claims. But
the point is that the desire for admiring attention becomes
futile except in the presence of an audience fit to render it.
The pathology of feeling, so often exemplified, consists in the
destruction of the audience for the sake of the fame. There
is also, of course, the sheer love of command, finally devoid
of high purpose. The complexity of human motive, the
entwinement of its threads, is infinite. The point, which is
here relevant, is that the zest of human adventure presupposes
for its material a scheme of things with a worth beyond
any single occasion. However perverted, there is required
for zest that craving to stand conspicuous in this scheme
of things as well as the purely personal pleasure in the
exercise of faculties. It is the final contentment aimed at by
the soul in its retreat to egoism, as distinct from anaesthesia.
In this, it is beyond human analysis to detect exactly where
the perversion begins to taint the intuition of Peace. Milton’s
phrase states the whole conclusion — ‘That last infirmity of
noble mind’.

Fame is a cold, hard notion. Another half-way house
between the extreme ecstasy of Peace and the extreme of
selfish desire is the love of particular individual things. Such
love is the completion almost necessary for finite reality, and
all reality is in some way finite. In the extreme of love, such
as mother’s love, all personal desire is transferred to the thing
loved, as a desire for its perfection. Personal life has here
evidently passed beyond itself, but with explicit, definite
limitation to particular realities. It is partly based upon the
importance of the individuality of details for the aesthetic
value of objective appearance. This has been discussed

PEACE

373

before.1 This aspect of personal love is simply a clinging to
a condition for selfish happiness. There is no transcendence
of personality.

But some closeness of status, such as the relation of parent
to child or the relation of marriage, can produce the love
of self-devotion where the potentialities of the loved object
are felt passionately as a claim that it find itself in a friendly
Universe. Such love is really an intense feeling as to how
the harmony of the world should be realized in particular
objects. It is the feeling as to what would happen if right
could triumph in a beautiful world, with discord routed.
It is the passionate desire for the beautiful result, in this
instance. Such love is distracting, nerve-racking. But, unless
darkened by utter despair, it involves deep feeling of an aim
in the Universe, winning such triumph as is possible to it.
It is the sense of Eros, hovering between Peace as the crown
of Youth and Peace as the issue of Tragedy.

Section VII. The general health of social life is taken care
of by formularized moral precepts, and formularized reli¬
gious beliefs and religious institutions. All of these explicitly
express the doctrine that the perfection of life resides in aims
beyond the individual person in question.

It is a doctrine of great generality, capable of a large
variety of specialization, not all of them mutually consistent.
For example, consider the patriotism of the Roman farmers,
in the full vigour of the Republic. Certainly Regulus did not
return to Carthage, with the certainty of torture and death,
cherishing any mystic notions of another life — either a
Christian Heaven or a Buddhist Nirvana. He was a practical
man, and his ideal aim was the Roman Republic flourishing
in this world. But this aim transcended his individual per¬
sonality; for this aim he entirely sacrificed every gratification

1 Cf. Chapter xvn, Section VIII, and Chapter xix, Section IV.

374

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

bounded by such limits. For him there was something in
the world which could not be expressed as sheer personal
gratification — and yet in thus sacrificing himself, his personal
existence rose to its full height. He may have been mistaken
in his estimate of the worth of the Roman Republic. The
point is that with that belief, he achieved magnificence by
the sacrifice of himself.

In this estimate Regulus has not in any way proved him¬
self to be exceptional. His conduct showed heroism that is
unusual. But his estimate of the worth of such conduct has
evoked widest assent. The Roman farmers agreed ; and
generation after generation, amid all the changes of history,
have agreed by the instinctive pulse of emotion as the tale is
handed down.

Moral codes have suffered from the exaggerated claims
made for them. The dogmatic fallacy has here done its worst.
Each such code has been put out by a God on a mountain
top, or by a Saint in a cave, or by a divine Despot on a
throne, or, at the lowest, by ancestors with a wisdom beyond
later question. In any case, each code is incapable of im¬
provement; and unfortunately in details they fail to agree
either with each other or with our existing moral intuitions.
The result is that the world is shocked, or amused, by the
sight of saintly old people hindering in the name of morality
the removal of obvious brutalities from a legal system. Some
Acta Sanctorum go ill with civilization.

The details of these codes are relative to the social circum¬
stances of the immediate environment — life at a certain date
on ‘ the fertile fringe ’ of the Arabian desert, life on the lower
slopes of the Himalayan Mountains, life on the plains of
China, or on the plains of India, life on the delta of some great
river. Again the meaning of the critical terms is shifting
and ambiguous, for example, the notions of ownership,

PEACE

375

family, marriage, murder, God. Conduct which in one
environment and at one stage produces its measure of har¬
monious satisfaction, in other surroundings at another stage
is destructively degrading. Each society has its own type of
perfection, and puts up with certain blots, at that stage in¬
evitable. Thus the notion that there are certain regulative
notions, sufficiently precise to prescribe details of conduct,
for all reasonable beings on Earth, in every planet, and in
every star-system, is at once to be put aside. That is the
notion of the one type of perfection at which the Universe
aims. All realization of the Good is finite, and necessarily
excludes certain other types.

But what these codes do witness to, and what their inter¬
pretation by seers of various races throughout history does
witness to, is the aim at a social perfection. Such a realized
fact is conceived as an abiding perfection in the nature of
things, a treasure for all ages. It is not a romance of thought,
it is a fact of Nature. For example, in one sense the Roman
Republic declined and fell; in another sense, it stands a
stubborn fact in the Universe. To perish is to assume a new
function in the process of generation. Devotion to the Re¬
public magnified the type of personal satisfactions for those
who conformed their purposes to its maintenance. Such con¬
formation of purpose to ideal beyond personal limitations is
the conception of that Peace with which the wise man can
face his fate, master of his soul.

Section VIII. The wide scope of the notion of ‘society’
requires attention. Transcendence begins with the leap from
the actuality of the immediate occasion to the notion of
personal existence, which is a society of occasions. In terms
of human life, the soul is a society. Care for the future
of personal existence, regret or pride in its past, are alike
feelings which leap beyond the bounds of the sheer actuality

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

376

of the present. It is in the nature of the present that it should
thus transcend itself by reason of the immanence in it of
the ‘other5. But there is no necessity as to the scale of em¬
phasis that this fact of nature should receive. It belongs to
the civilization of consciousness to magnify the large sweep
of harmony.

Beyond the soul there are other societies, and societies of
societies. There is the animal body ministering to the soul:
there are families, groups of families, nations, species, groups
involving different species associated in the joint enterprise
of keeping alive. These various societies, each in its measure,
claim loyalties and loves. In human history the various re¬
sponses to these claims disclose the essential transcendence
of each individual actuality beyond itself. The stubborn
reality of the absolute self-attainment of each individual is
bound up with a relativity which it issues from and issues
into. The analysis of the various strands of relativity is the
analysis of the social structure of the Universe, as in this
epoch.

Although particular codes of morality reflect, more or
less imperfectly, the special circumstances of social structure
concerned, it is natural to seek for some highly general prin¬
ciples underlying all such codes. Such generalities should
reflect the very notions of the harmonizing of harmonies,
and of particular individual actualities as the sole authentic
reality. These are the principles of the generality of harmony,
and of the importance of the individual. The first means
‘order5, and the second means ‘love5. Between the two there
is a suggestion of opposition. For ‘order* is impersonal;
and ‘love5, above all things, is personal, The antithesis is
solved by rating types of order in relative importance
according to their success in magnifying the individual
actualities, that is to say, in promoting strength of experience.

PEACE

377

Also in rating the individual on the double basis, partly on
the intrinsic strength of its own experience, and partly on its
influence in the promotion of a high-grade type of order.
These two grounds in part coalesce. For a weak individual
exerts a weak influence. The essence of Peace is that the
individual whose strength of experience is founded upon this
ultimate intuition, thereby is extending the influence of the
source of all order.

The moral code is the behaviour-patterns which in the en¬
vironment for which it is designed will promote the evolution
of that environment towards its proper perfection.

Section IX. The attainment of Truth belongs to the essence
of Peace. By this it is meant, that the intuition constituting
the realization of Peace has as its objective that Harmony
whose inter-connections involve Truth. A defect in Truth
is a limitation to Harmony. There can be no secure efficacy
in the Beauty which hides within itself the dislocations of
falsehood.

The truth or falsehood of propositions is not directly to
the point in this demand for Truth. Since each proposition
is yoked to a contradictory proposition, and since of these
one must be true and the other false, there are necessarily
as many false as there are true propositions. This bare Truth
or falsehood5 of propositions is a comparatively superficial
factor affecting the discursive interests of the intellect. The
essential truth that Peace demands is the conformation of
Appearance to Reality. There is the Reality from which the
occasion of experience springs — a Reality of inescapable,
stubborn fact; and there is the Appearance with which the
occasion attains its final individuality — an Appearance in¬
cluding its adjustment of the Universe by simplification,
valuation, transmutation, anticipation. A feeling of disloca¬
tion of Appearance from Reality is the final destructive force,

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

378

robbing life of its zest for adventure. It spells the decadence
of civilization, by stripping from it the very reason for its
existence.

There can be no necessity governing this conformation.
Sense-perception, which dominates the appearance of things,
in its own nature re-arranges, and thus in a way distorts.
Also there can be no mere blunt truth about the Appearance
which it provides. In its own nature Sense-perception is an
interpretation, and this interpretation may be completely
misleading. If there were a necessary conformation of Ap¬
pearance to Reality, then Morality would vanish. There is
no morality about the multiplication table, whose items are
necessarily linked. Art would also be a meaningless term.
For it presupposes the efficacy of purpose. Art is an issue of
adventure.

The question for discussion is whether there exists any
factor in the Universe constituting a general drive towards
the conformation of Appearance to Reality. This drive
would then constitute a factor in each occasion persuading
an aim at such truth as is proper to the special appearance
in question. This concept of truth, proper to each special
appearance, would mean that the appearance has not built
itself up by the inclusion of elements that are foreign to the
reality from which it springs. The appearance will then be
a generalization and an adaptation of emphasis; but not an
importation of qualities and relations without any corre¬
sponding exemplification in the reality. This concept of truth
is in fact the denial of the doctrine of Appearance which
lies on the surface of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. It is
a denial of his answer to the question— How are synthetic
a priori judgments possible? It is at least the introduction
of guarding limitations, which Kant explicitly in that work
does not introduce.

PEACE

379

Section X. The answer to this question must issue from
a survey of the factors in terms of which individual ex¬
perience has been interpreted — The antecedent World from
which each occasion springs, a World of many occasions
presenting for the new creature harmonies and discords : the
easy road of Anaesthesia by which discordant factors are dis¬
missed into irrelevance: the activity of the mental poles in
building conceptual experience into patterns of feeling which
rescue discords from loss : the spontaneity of the mental action
and its persuasion by a sense of relevance : the selective nature
of consciousness and its initial failure to discriminate the
deeper sources of feeling: that there is no agency in ab¬
straction from actual occasions, and that existence involves
implication in agency : the sense of a unity of many occasions
with a value beyond that of any individual occasion; for
example, the soul, the complete animal, the social group of
animals, the material body, the physical epoch: the aim at
immediate individual contentment.

The justification for the suggestion derived from this group
of factors must mainly rest upon their direct elucidation of
first-hand experience. They are not, and should not be,
the result of an argument. For all argument must rest upon
premises more fundamental than the conclusions. Discussion
of fundamental notions is merely for the purpose of disclosing
their coherence, their compatibility, and the specializations
which can be derived from their conjunction.

The above set of metaphysical notions rests itself upon the
ordinary, average experience of mankind, properly inter¬
preted. But there is a further set for which the appeal lies
to occasions and modes of experience which in some degree
are exceptional. It must be remembered that the present
level of average waking human experience was at one time
exceptional among the ancestors of mankind. We are justi-

ADVENTURES OF IDEAS

380

fied therefore in appealing to those modes of experience
which in our direct judgment stand above the average level.
The gradual emergence of such modes, and their effect on
human history, have been among the themes of this book
in its appeal to history. We have found the growth of Art:
its gradual sublimation into the pursuit of Truth and Beauty:
the sublimation of the egoistic aim by its inclusion of the
transcendent whole: the youthful zest in the transcendent
aim: the sense of tragedy: the sense of evil: the persuasion
towards Adventure beyond achieved perfection: the sense of
Peace.

Section XI. The concept of Civilization, as developed
up to this stage, remains inherently incomplete. No logical
argument can demonstrate this gap. Such arguments are
merely subsidiary helps for the conscious realization of
metaphysical intuitions — Non in dialectica complacuit Deo
salvum facer e populum suum. This saying, quoted by Cardinal
Newman,1 should be the motto of every metaphysician.
He is seeking, amid the dim recesses of his ape-like con¬
sciousness and beyond the reach of dictionary language, for
the premises implicit in all reasoning. The speculative
methods of metaphysics are dangerous, easily perverted. So
is all Adventure; but Adventure belongs to the essence of
civilization.

The incompleteness of the concept relates to the notion of
Transcendence, the feeling essential for Adventure, Zest, and
Peace. This feeling requires for its understanding that we
supplement the notion of the Eros by including it in the
concept of an Adventure in the Universe as One. This
Adventure embraces all particular occasions but as an actual
fact stands beyond any one of them. It is, as it were,
the complement to Plato’s Receptacle, its exact opposite,

1 Grammar of Assent.

PEACE

381

yet equally required for the unity of all things. In every
way, it is contrary to the Receptacle. The Receptacle is bare
of all forms: the Unity of Adventure includes the Eros
which is the living urge towards all possibilities, claiming
the goodness of their realization. The Platonic Receptacle
is void, abstract from all individual occasions: The Unity
of Adventure includes among its components all individual
realities, each with the importance of the personal or social
fact to which it belongs. Such individual importance in the
components belongs to the essence of Beauty. In this Supreme
Adventure, the Reality which the Adventure transmutes into
its Unity of Appearance requires the real occasions of the
advancing world each claiming its due share of attention.
This Appearance, thus enjoyed, is the final Beauty with which
the Universe achieves its justification. This Beauty has always
within it the renewal derived from the Advance of the
Temporal World. It is the immanence of the Great Fact
including this initial Eros and this final Beauty which con¬
stitutes the zest of self-forgetful transcendence belonging to
Civilization at its height.

At the heart of the nature of things, there are always the
dream of youth and the harvest of tragedy. The Adventure
of the Universe starts with the dream and reaps tragic Beauty.
This is the secret of the union of Zest with Peace — That the
suffering attains its end in a Harmony of Harmonies. The
immediate experience of this Final Fact, with its union of
Youth and Tragedy, is the sense of Peace. In this way the
World receives its persuasion towards such perfections as are
possible for its diverse individual occasions.

INDEX OF PROPER NAMES

Adrian the Sixth, 138
Aeschylus, 360
Akhnaton, 62

Alexander the Great, 14, 67, 79, 132,
133

Alexandria, 136
America, 23, 28
Aquinas, 27
Archytas, 190
Aristarchas, 134

Aristotle, 70, 79, 132, 136, 149, 155,
169-172, 180-183, 1 90-1 94, 200,
287, 305, 355, 356
Arius, 134
Asquith, 43
Athanasius, 134
Athens, 133
Atticus, 82, 83
Attila, 7

Augustine, 27, 68, 103, 134, 135, 166,
167, 205, 21 1
Augustus, 25, 79

Bacon, Francis, 36, 39, 74
Bacon, Roger, 195
Bailey, Cyril, viii, 157
Bentham, 45-48
Bergson, 287
Bradley, F. H., 296-299
Bright, John, 42
Burke, Edmund, 23, 56

Caesar, 14

Calvin, 27, 63, 166, 167, 205, 21 1
Campbell-Bannerman, 43
Charles the Second, 76
China, 95, 99, 100, 132
Cicero, 14, 16, 24, 25, 67, 82
Claudius, 69

Clement of Alexandria, 7, 22, 52

Cleon, 14

Clerk-Maxwell, 238
Cobden, 42
Columbus, 359

Comte, Auguste, 45, 47, 48, 165
Constantine the Great, 63
Cotes, Roger, 201
Cranmer, 2 1 1
Crete, 132

Cyril (of Alexandria), 134
Dante, 38

Darwin, Charles, 44. 45 48
Democritus, 155, 156, 159
Denison, J. H., 299
Descartes, 74, 145, 168, 169, 172, 225,
244, 263, 270, 287, 362
Dionysius, The Younger, 38
Disraeli, 42

Donham, Dean W. B., viii
Dutch Republic, 63

Edwards, Jonathan, 2 1 1
Egypt, 131, 132

Epicurus, 136, 148, 155, 156, 160, 167,
1 71, 172, 182, 200
Erasmus, 74, 2 1 1
Euclid, 108, 134
Euripides, 291, 360
Europe, 9, 10

Fox, George, 21 1, 212
France, 23
Franklin, B., 36

Galba, 69
Galen, 76

Galileo, 74, 145, 186, 192, 244
Galton, Francis, 45
Gandhi, Mahatma, 205, 206

INDEX OF PROPER NAMES

384

Gerbert (Silvester the Second), 195,
199

Gibbon, Edward, vii, 5, 6, 82, 358
Gladstone, W. E., 42, 43, 292
Greece, 131, 132
Gregory the Great, 34, 102

Halevy, Elie, 27
Hammond, Barbara, 42
Hammond, J. L., 42
Hanno, 101
Hartington, Lord, 43
Hervey, 74
Hipparchus, 1 91
Hobhouse, L. T., 300
Hooker, Richard, 27
Hume, 35-37, 45~48. *59. 160, 165,
168, 225, 232, 233, 236, 237, 240,
244, 283-289, 300, 370
Huss, John, 21 1
Huxley, 163

Ignatius Loyola, 21 1
India, 95, 99, 100, 132
Irwin, Lord, 205

James, William, 240, 297
Jefferson, 36
Jerome, 27
Johnson, W. E., 295
Joseph, Mr H. W. B., 295
Jowett, B., 135
Justinian, 103

Kant, 289, 300, 378
Kepler, 3 1 1

Lamarck, 45

Leibniz, 27, 74, 167-172, 300
Leo the Tenth, 138
Leonardo da Vinci, 77
Leonardo of Pisa, 1 95
Lewis, Sinclair, 358
Locke, John, 22, 23, 27, 36, 63, 167,
208, 225, 244, 287, 289, 355, 356
Lovejoy, Professor, 244
Lowell, Percy, 162-164
Lucian, 69, 358

Lucretius, 67, 136, 1 55-1 59, 167-172,
227

Luther, 27, 63, 138, 182, 205, 21 1, 213

Macaulay, 4
Malthus, 93, 95
Marcus Aurelius, 1 7
Marius, 14
Marx, Karl, 43
Mendel, 45
Mesopotamia, 132
Mill, J. S., 165 "

Milton, 66

Monro, H. A. J., 157
Moore, George Foot, 299
Morley, John, 292

Near East, The, 9, 10, 95, 98-108
Nero, 69
Nestorius, 134
Newman, Cardinal, vii, 380
Newton, Isaac, 22, 36, 46, 108, 144,
145, 155, 156, 167-169, 172, 186,
192, 200, 201, 244
Nietzsche, 287

Occam, 305

Paine, T., 37, 47
Palestine, 13 1
Paul, St, 67-69
Pearson, Karl, 45
Pelagius, 135, 205
Pericles, 14, 64, 65, 70, 219
Phoenicia, 132
Pitt, William (Chatham), 56
Plato, 6, 13-18, 24, 25, 29-31, 38-40,
48. 50, 53. 64> 65, 69, 70, 79, 80,
86, 103, 105, 126, 132-136, 150-
156, 162-173, 182, 183, 189-197,
200, 203, 205, 209, 213-216, 221,
225, 240-244, 267, 285, 287, 293,

294. 304. 354. 38o
Pliny, 16, 69, 70, 358
Poincare, Henri, 31 1
Poynting, 238
Price, H. H., 279
Ptolemy, 134, 1 91

INDEX OF PROPER NAMES

385

Pythagoras, 182

Roman Empire, 16, 20, 101, 102
Rome, 25
Rousseau, 26

Santayana, 279
Sarpi, Paul, vii
Shaftesbury, Lord, 42
Sidonius Apollinaris, 83
Silvester the Second (Gerbert), 195,
199

Smith, Adam, 35
Socrates, 64, 68, 69
Solomon, 108
Sophocles, 360
Spinoza, 134
Stephen, Leslie, vii
Strachey, Lytton, 12, 358
Suarez, 27
Sulla, 14

Tacitus, 358
Taylor, A. E., viii, 135
Taylor, H. O., vii, viii, 70
Thales, 180

Thomson, Sir J. J., 238
Thucydides, 64
Trajan, 69, 70

Varus, 102
Vauban, 77
Vesalius, 76
Virgil, 25, 67
Voltaire, 26

Walpole, Robert, 56, 57
Watt, James, 77
Wesley, John, 57, 21 1
William the Conqueror, 33
Woolman, John, 29, 37, 47
Wycliffe, 2 1 1

wi

25

INDEX OF TERMS

Absolute Being, 142
Absolute Individuality, 80, 235
Absolute Reality, 227
Absolute Self- Attainment, 227
Absoluteness, 54-56
Abstraction, 187

Actuality, 172, 230, 242, 347, 354
Adventure, vii, 332, 350, 352-381
Aesthetic Destruction, 330
Affective Tone, 226, 315
Agencies, Intellectual, 13
Agency, 253, 254
Agriculture, 1 39-1 41
Alexandrian Scholarship, 150, 155
Alexandrian Theologians, 166, 167
American Civil War, 26, 29
Anaesthesia, 329, 334, 355, 367, 368
Anglican Settlement, 205
Animal Body, 263, 275, 376
Anticipation, 248, 249, 340, 343, 344
Appeal to History, 207, 208, 2 1 1
Appearance, 309-322, 332-348, 355,
362, 363, 377-381
Appearance and Reality, 268-282
Arabs, 133
Argument, 379
Arian Solution, 216
Aristotle’s Logic, 169-171, 356
Art, 277, 320, 321, 344-353, 364-381
Association, 300
Association of Ideas, 234
Atomicity, 238
Atomism, 159, 160, 168
Atoms, 155, 156, 159, 169, 227
Autonomy, 327, 328

Background, 334
Beautiful, 328, 329

Beauty, 12, 153, 154, 190, 309, 324-
35 L 353, 365-381

Body, 243

Body, Animal, 263, 275, 376
Body, Human, 242, 243, 274, 275,
281, 349
Brain, 290

British Government, The, 23
Brotherhood, 46
Brotherhood of Man, 28, 35, 37
Buddhism, 41
Business Mind, 1 23-1 25
Byzantines, 104

Capriciousness, 141

Carthaginians, 30

Catholic Church, 34, 74, 107

Catholic Missionaries, 28, 37

Catholic Theology, 212

Causal Action, 153

Causal Independence, 251, 252, 278

Causation, 237, 251

Certainties of Science, 1 98

Chance, 157, 158

Chaos, 147

Christian Ethics, 105, 107
Christianity, 18-20, 41, 102, 108, 133
Christians, 69
Cities, 1 20-1 22

Civilization, vii, ix, 9, 10, 25, 95, 96,
105-108, 127, 140, 181, 188, 212,
218-220, 348-352, 357-363, 380,
381

Classification, Aristotelian, 1 20-122,
176, 183, 196
Coercive Forces, 213
Commerce, 83, 88-125
Common Law, 36, 81
Communal Customs, 52
Communication, 171, 172
Compatibility, 188
Competition, 35, 38, 39, 42

INDEX OF TERMS

388

Complete Fact, 203
Composition, 197
Compulsion, 6, 71, 87, 89, 106, 108,
213, 218

Conceptual Order, The, 1 98
Conceptual Prehensions, 250
Concern, 226, 232
Concrescence, 303, 304
Conformal Feeling, 235, 236, 326
Conformal Inheritance, 239
Conformal Reception, 249
Conformation, 322
Connectedness, 197, 293, 306
Consciousness, 226, 232, 347
Constraint, 255

Contemporary Events, 251-255
Contemporary Occasions, 316-318
Contemporary World, 281
Contiguity, 259, 260
Continuity of Nature, 235, 238, 239
Continuity of Subjective Form, 236-
242

Contract, 81

Contractual Freedom, 80
Conventional Interpretation, 152, 1 73-
177

Co-ordination, 37, 38, 43, 44
Corporate Action, 68, 70, 82
Corporations, 83
Corporeal Substances, 255
Cosmological Principles, 10
Cosmology, 14, 131
Crafts, 73

Creative Advance, 369
Creative Urge, 248, 249
Creativity, 230, 303, 304
Custom, 7, 236
Customary Status, 80

Data, 230

Decadence, 358, 359
Defining Characteristic, 261, 265
Definition of Being, 1 53
Deism, 144, 145
Democracy, 23, 24, 29
Description, 152, 156, 157
Descriptive Generalization, 301
Destruction, 339

Dimensionality, 243

Discord, 330, 334~338> 342, 384
Disorder, 189
Distortion, 281, 31 1
Divine Eros, 357
Divine Immanence, 206
Division, Platonic, 176, 183
Dogmatic Fallacy, 185, 287
Dogmatic Finality, 208
Dualism, 244, 245

Economic Interpretation of History,
84

Economic Man, 1 1 9

Elimination, 334

Empty Cabinet, 355

Empty Continents, 96, 101

Endurance, 262, 263

Enduring Individuality, 339, 361-364

Enduring Objects, 255, 265

Enduring Person, 250

Enduring Unity, 257

Energy, 239

Energy, Flux of, 237, 239
Enjoyment, 249
Epistemology, 159, 170
Epochs, 251

Eros, 13, 84, 188, 189, 203, 256, 323,

354> 355> 366
Essential Character, 257
Ethics, 19
Events, 255
Evidence, 291
Evil, 333, 336, 345
Exact Science, 136
Excessiveness, 138
Experience, 228

Experience, Structure of, 225-245
Explanation, 143
Explanatory Description, 164
Expression, 320
External Relations, 144, 201

Fame, 371, 372
Feeling, 295, 296
Feudal System, 37 «

Feudalism, 33, 34, 74
Finitude, 333, 356

INDEX OF TERMS

389

Flatness, 278
Fluent, 165

Flux of Energy, 236, 238, 242
Flux of Impressions, 36, 37
Force, 105
Foreground, 334
Foresight, 1 10-125

Freedom, 15, 29, 42. 61-65, 68, 77,
83-S6, 251, 255, 362, 369
Future Occasions, 246-257

Galilean Peasantry, 19
General Description, 164
Geometry in an Epoch, 258
Gnostics, 167
God, 13
Gold, 89, 90
Golden Mean, 138
Goodness, 345, 346
Grace, 205
Grammar, 133

Greatest Happiness Principle, 45, 47, 50
Greek, 10

Grouping of Occasions, 258-267

Harmony, 39, 40, 188, 190, 194, 196,
197, 203, 205, 325, 333-344> 349>
354> 356, 360-367, 377
Hebrew, 10

Hebrew Prophets, 62, 63
Hellenic, 10

Hellenic Mentality, 104, 137
Hellenic Speculation, 136
Hellenism, 70, 82, 86, 104, 134, 150,

I5I5 331
Hellenistic, 10

Hellenistic Mentality, 137
History, 3, 4, 8, 207, 208
History of Religion, 220
Human Body, 242, 243, 274, 275, 281,

349

Humanitarian Ideal, 35-53
Humanitarian Principles, 38
Humanitarian Spirit, 105
Hume’s Dialogues on Natural Re¬
ligion, 217

Icon, 215

Ideality, 347, 349
Ideals, 6, 109, 215

Ideas, 18-21, 30, 105, 127, 165, 187-
189, 203, 215, 333, 354, 366
Idolatry, 12
Imitation, 215

Immanence, 152-158, 172, 216, 217
241, 246-257, 259
Immanence, Nonsymmetrical, 254
Immanence of God, 166, 167
Immanence of Occasions, 237
Immanent Law, 143, 145, 165, 166
Immediate Existence, 246
Immediate Future, 247
Immediate Past, 233, 234, 247
Imposed Law, 144, 165-167
Imposition, 152, 154, 156
Impression of Sensation, 159, 232
Incompatibility, 188, 357
Individual Identity, 209
Individual Substance, 170
Individual Thing, 197
Individualism, 42, 44, 74
Individuality, 200, 227, 235, 331, 332,

3395 34°» 360, 376
Induction, 143 ,

Industrial Slavery, 42
Industrial System, 41, 43
Inheritance, 80, 243, 278
Inhibition, 324, 329
Instinct, 58, 60
Intelligence, 59, 60
Intensity, 325, 334
Interconnection, 169, 170
Interdependence, 142
Internal Relations, 144, 201
Interpretation, 279, 320
Introspection, 290, 293
Irrelevance, 255
“It,” 327, 336-3395 361

Jesuits, 47
Jews, 104, 133
Judgment, 294, 295

Knowledge, 5, 227

Language, 153, 209, 210, 291, 293

39°

INDEX OF TERMS

Law, 139, 1 41
Law, Natural, 152
Law as Convention, 142
Law as Description, 142, 147
Law as Immanent, 142, 153
Law as Imposed, 142
Law as Statistical, 143
Law of Gravitation, 181
Laws of Nature, 51, 52, 172, 173, 175,
i77> 257

Learned Professions, 136
Learned Tradition, 133
Legal Organization, 105
Liberalism, 41-47, 79
Liberty, 68, 71, 74
Life, 102, 264, 266
Life and Mind, 1 54
Life and Motion, 188, 355, 367
Life of Christ, 214
Living Bodies, 266, 267
Living Organisms, 255
Logic, 150

Logic, Aristotelian, 196
Love, 372, 373, 376
Lowell Observatory, 161

Mahometans, 103, 104, 133
Malthusian Law, 35, 44, 91-98
Man, 264

Manichaean Doctrine, 166
Mariners’ Compass, 107
Massiveness, 325, 336
Mathematical Formulae, 203
Mathematical Relations, 188, 191,
194, 196, 203, 326, 354, 366
Mathematics, 150, 161, 174, 176, 191,
I96-I99

Matter, Aristotelian, 156, 192
Memory, 237
Mental Role, 326, 333
Mentality, 271, 272
Metaphysics, 163, 164
Method, 185, 283-305
Mind, 263, 269
Mind and Nature, 239
Mingling of Genera, 302
Mode of Togetherness, 313
Modern Scholarship, 137

Monads, 1 71
Monads of Leibniz, 1 68
Moral Codes, 374-377
Moral Order, 132
Morals, 345, 346

Natural Law, 152
Natural Selection, 44
Nature, 12, 131

Necessity, 9, 88, 250, 251, 254, 258,
259

Negative Prehension, 334
Neologisms, 294

Non-Sensuous Perception, 231, 236
Novelty, 10, 273

Objective Immortality, 248, 305
Objects and Subjects, 225-245
Observation, 136, 164
Observational Order, The, 198
Occasion of Experience, 230
Order, 376

Order, Types of, 251, 256, 257
Order of Nature, 131, 132, 167
Original Contract, 71
Originality, 359
Other-Formation, 248
Otherness, 231

Participation, 310
Passivity, 272
Past Occasions, 246-257
Pattern, 3 10-31 2, 315
Patterned Nexus, 260
Peace, 353, 366-381
Perception, 229, 231
Perceptual Acceptance, 279
Perfection, 329, 330, 333, 348, 354
Perishing, 262, 304, 305, 355, 375
Permanence, 369
Persians, 104

Personal Identity, 237, 240
Personal Order, 242, 244
Personal Societies, 263-267, 271
Personal Unity, 240
Personality, 239
Persons, 255, 262, 263, 264
Perspective, 255, 256, 280

INDEX OF TERMS

391

Persuasion, 31, 53, 87, 88, 105, 109,
189, 205, 206, 214, 241, 381
Persuasive Agency, 2 1 3-2 1 6
Phoenician Sailors, 100, 101
Physical Elements, 188, 203, 354, 366
Physical Entities, 202
Plato’s Seven Notions, 354, 366
Political Economy, 90, 91
Population, 92-94

Positivist Doctrine, 146-148, 158-167

Potentiality, 230

Power, 12, 106, 165

Predication, 170, 314

Pre-established Harmony, 171

Prehension, 227, 232, 295, 298, 300

Present Occasions, 346-357

Primary Phase, 230

Primary Substance, 170, 356, 361

Primordial Nature of God, 362

Printing, 107

Private Actions, 70

Private Life, 39

Private Property, 80

Probability, 158, 160

Process, 192, 354, 355

Process of Becoming, 226

Professional Institutions, 74, 77, 79

Professional Qualifications, 72, 73, 77

Professions, 76

Programme for Reform, 17, 18,52, 333
Prophets, 183
Proportion, 190

Propositions, 248, 294, 295, 312
Protestant Christianity, 205
Protestant Theology, 2 1 7
Psyche, 12, 188, 189, 203, 350, 354,
355> 366

Purpose, 266, 340, 342
Quakers, 29, 63

Qualitative Valuation, 269, 326
Quanta, 239

Real Agency, 269

Realitas Objectiva, 362

Reality, 309, 3 17-321, 332, 335, 340-

345 j 348, 349, 362-365, 377, 378
Realization, 254

Reasoning, 107

Receptacle, 156, 171, 172, 188, 192,
197, 203, 241, 242, 258, 317, 354,
366

Re-enaction, 248, 249, 349
Reformation, New, 206
Reformation, Protestant, 212
Regions, 254

Relativity, 54-56, 61, 197
Relevance, 284, 286
Religion, 95, 96, 207
Religion, Mystical, 41
Religion and Science, 50
Religion of Humanity, 45, 47
Renaissance Monarchs, 40
Repetition, 333
Revelation of St John, 219
Rights of Man, 15, 22
Roads, 107
Romans, 104
Routine, 113-116, 180

Satire, 358

Satisfaction, 248, 295, 298, 301, 344
Scholars, 149, 154
Scholarship, 131, 137, 138
Scholasticism, 134, 137
Scholastics, 149, 155
Science, 350
Scientists, 149
Self-Formation, 248, 269
Self-Identity, 241, 262
Sensa, 276, 277, 314, 315, 321, 322
Sensationalist Doctrine, 360, 361
Sense-Organs, 289

Sense-Perception, 228, 232, 269, 274,
276-279, 316
Senseless Forces, 21
Sensible World, 165
Sentences, 312
Serial Order, 259, 260, 263
Seriality, 243
Simplification, 273, 335
Slave-Trade, 23, 33, 34
Slavery, 14, 15, 28
Slaves, 106

Simple Location, 201, 202
Simplification, 273, 335

INDEX OF TERMS

392

Social Institutions, 68
Social Order, 261
Societies, 255, 260-264, 375
Sociological Defence, 102
Sociological Functions, 10
Sociological Ideals, 32
Soul, 18, 22, 29, 36, 64, 156, 189,
241, 243, 263, 267, 271, 276, 337,
354> 355

Space-Time, 192, 241
Speculation, 66, 67, 131, 133, 137,
138, 153

Speculative Philosophy, 30, 285, 286
Speech of Pericles, 2 1 9
Spontaneity, 59, 64, 80, 266, 325,

328, 332

Sporadic Occurrence, 255
Statistics, 161
Status, Social, 1 1
Stoics, 16

Straightness, 277, 278
Strength, 325
Strife, 40, 41

Structure of Experience, 225-245, 247
Subjective Aim, 269, 325
Subjective Form, 227, 236, 269, 277,
297, 325

Subjects and Objects, 225-245, 247,
268

Sublimation, 350
Substance, 145, 172
Substratum, 281
Subtlety, 273
Supreme Craftsman, 189
Swerve ( Lucre tian), 157
Symbolic Truth, 318
Systems, 203

Tartars, 104

Technology, 33, 95-97, 101, 107
Teleological Self-Creation, 251, 252
Teleology, 249, 259
Temporal World, 381

Theologians, 165, 166
Thinking Substance, 240, 263
Time-Spans, 116-118
Together, 169, 303, 304
Tolerance, 63-65
Topics of Physical Science, 49
Tragedy, 368-381

Transcendence, 154, 166, 167, 375,

378

Transition, 8

Transmutation, 274, 276, 315
Truth, 12, 309-323, 341-35C 353>
366-381

Truth and Beauty, 341 -351
Truth and Falsehood, 314
Truth-Relation, 310-323, 340-342
Turks, 105
Types of Order, 318

Uniform Relations, 253
Uniformity of Nature, 99, 241
Uniformity of Space, 253
Unity of Nature, 241
Universities, 73, 74
University Professors, 133

Vacuous Inherence, 281
Valuation, 269
Vatican Council, 21 1
Violence, 6

Void, 156, 168, 1 71, 172

Wave-Theory, 200
Wesleyan Revival, 27
Western Civilization, 137
Wisdom, 59, 60
Women, 106

Working Hypothesis, 286
World-Soul, 166

Youth, 369, 370, 381

Zest, 381

PRINTED BY WALTER

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